Refort Resumes

REFORT RESUMES

ED 013 679 RC 001 644 FARM LABOR ORGANIZING 1905-1967, A BRIEFHISTORY. BY- TOCPIJI, LINDA LEWIS AND OTHERS NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON FARM LABOR,NEWYORK PUB DATE JUL 67 EDRS FRICEmF-10.50HC-12.96 74F.

DESCRIFTORS- '=AGRICULTURAL LABORERS, ACTIVITIES,CHINESE, FARM LABOR, *HISTORICAL REVIEWS, IMMIGRANTS, *LACORUNIONS; ORGANIZATION, NATIONAL FARM LABOR UNION, NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL WORKERS UNION, NATIONAL LACORRELATIONS ACT, SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS UNION, AFL,

AGRICULTURAL LABORERS HAVE BEEN INEi-TECTIVEIN ORGANIZING A LABOR UNION. THE NATIONAL LABORRELATIONS ACT WRITTEN IN 1935 ORIGINALLY HAD F1OVISIONS FORAGRICULTURAL LABORERS, CUT IT WAS DELETED 6,770RE FINAL PASSAGE.EARLY ORGANIZING ATTEMFTS OCCURRED IN THE LATE YEARS OF THE19TH CENTURY WHEN CHINESE IMMIGRANTS OGANIZEDPROTECTIVE ASSOCIATIONS KNOWN AS TONGS. THE WOLVES WEREORGANIZED IN 1905 AS A RESULT OF A MERGER Of MINERS AND LABORUNIONS. FARM LABOR ORGANIZING CURING THE DEPRESSION YEARSWAS VIRTUALLY NON-EXISTENT, UNTIL 1934, WHEN THE SOUTHERN TENANTFARMERS UNION WAS ORGANIZED IN ARKANSAS, AND ITS ACTIVITIESPROVIDED GREAT IMPETUS TO ALL UNION ORGANIZATION. IN 1946,THE AFL GRANTED A CHARTER TO THE NATIONAL FARM UNIONAND THIS UNION IN TURN BECA -,E THE NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL WORKERSUNION. THE MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM LACOR UNION WAS ORGANIZED IN1964 AND PROVIDED A BREAKTHROUGH FOR OTHER LABOR UNIONS SUCHAS THE NATIONAL FARM WORKERS ASSOCIATION, UNITED FARMWURKERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE, AND AGRICULTURAL WORKERS. ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIVITIES ARE TAKING PLACE IN CALIFORNIA, LOUISIANA, TEXAS, WISCONSIN, MICHIGAN, FLORIDA, NEWJERSEY, AND NEW YORK. THE AFL-CIO HAS BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN PROVIDING GUIDANCE AND INITIATIVE TO THESE ORGANIZATIONALACTIVITIES. (JS) Farm Labor Organizing 1905-1967 A Brief History

"It Asiarreale... Dear Reader: This pamphlet is presented as a public service to create better understanding of the needs of the poorest and least protected of our working peoplethe farm workers. We hope that after reading it you will be moved to help these fellow Americans attain equal protection under our laws. Major credit for the organization, research, and writing of this pamphlet goes to our Assistant Executive Secretary, Linda Lewis Tooni. She received invaluable assistance from Gail Hershberger. our Administrative Assistant. Robin Myers and Anne Montero helped prepare material for several of the chapters. Lena Manderville typed the manuscript. To all of these, we express our deep appreciation. We are pleased to include statements from prominent Americans on the subject of farm labor organizing. Weare grateful for several contributions, especially that of our Committee member J. M. Kaplan, made toward the cost of publishing this report. The National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor isa nonprofit, voluntary agency of private citizens whose aim is to improve conditions for farm workers. Now at long last, through theirown heroic struggles, these workers have achieved a major breakthrough in the Delano grape fields. But farm workers all across the country need the help ',f all concerned Americans to secure the protection of law in their right to join unions of their choice and to bargain with their employers. Most large growers are organized in their own associations. We believe the same right should be granted to their workers.

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Frank P. Graham A. Philip Randolph Co-Chairmen U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE

OFFICE OF EDUCATION

THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS

STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. Farm Labor Organizing 1905-1967 A Brkf History

NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON FARMLABOR 112 East 19th Street, New York, N.Y. 10003 July, 1967 Contents

Foreword 3 Introduction 5

Farm Workers and The National Labor Relations Act 8

First Organizing Attempts in California 11

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union 18

Hawaii and Its 'Little NLRA" 28

The AFL, the CIO, and Farm Workers After World War II 33

The Sixties: Breakthrough 44 How You Can Help Win Collective Bargaining Coverage for Farm Workers 66

Notes 67 Foreword by Steve Allen

The United States is the richest nation on earth, presently enjoy- ing the richest moment of its history. But for all our affluence and charitable impulses the ideal of social justice is far from completely realized in our land. Countless millions live in abject poverty and squalor. The cold-hearted often categorize these poor as worthless people too lazy to work for a living. But in addition to the millions on welfare (less than one per cent of whom are actually employable, according to a recent Presi- dential study), there are millions, including most farm workers, who work hard yet cannot even afford the basic necessities. The frustrations of these "working poor" should be one of our country's gravest concerns. Though big-city poverty attracts most public attention, the fact is that 46 per cent of the nation's poverty exists in rural areas. The urban poor have become vocal and attention has at last been attracted to their needs. But the poor of the countryside are for the most part unorganized, isolated, powerless, invisible. I do not see how this nation can continue to justify the treatment to which our farm workers have long been subjected. These people work at physically exhausting labor for very low pay. Most of them live in disgracefully inadequate quarters and receive little or no medical attention; their children are given a poor substitute for an education. It was not very many years ago that an American working man could be fired without being given cause or notice, when his salary could be reduced at an employer's whim, when he had to work 10 or 12 hours a day, when young children labored in dangerous factories to eaLn pennies a day, when workers were beaten and killed if they attempted to organize. Three things were required to change

3 the situation: public indignation, rights of collectivebargaining, and civilized legislation. Americans are rightly proud today of the securitynow enjoyed by the average working man. But lookingback over our shoulders we see that the farm laborer has been left behind in the forward march. There can be legitimate differences of opinionamong reasonable men as regards the best solution to the farm worker's problem. But there can be no justification for those whoare simply determined to keep the field-hand in his place, to intimidateor even to ignore him. To become familiar with the informationin this pamphlet is to automatically come under a moral obligation. It is sometimes erroneously supposed that the farm labor problem is serious only in the deep South,or in the Southwest. But the problem is national. While an entire farm family in Texasmay work a year and earn only about $1500, thingsare bad enough in Massachusetts. On a farm north of Bostonmen put in as many as 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 95 centsan hour. They live in shacks with cardboard on the floor. In Rochelle, Illinois,a migrant family of ten was recently "living" inone room with a cement floor and walls and one small window, all surrounded bya sea of mud. As if their lives were not hard enough, farm laborersmust also contend with dangerous hazards. Although theycomprise about 7 per cent of the U.S. work force they suffer over 22 per cent of all fatalities from work accidents. It would be unwise to view the farm labor predicamentas a controversy pitting workers against growers and then, on the basis of one's social biases, choose to supportone side or the other. Both forces must be supported. Even the wealthiest farmersare faced with a cost-price squeeze and theyare certainly as entitled to a profit as employers in any other industry. But thatsame understanding should be accorded those decentmen and women without whose labor the farm owner would be out of business overnight. A generation ago certain short-sighted representatives ofman- agement predicted that economic disaster would follow recognition of the rights and privileges of the working man. Instead American industry today is more powerful and successful thanever. If, as Senator Robert Kennedy has observed, we can plan to puta man on the moon before the end of this decade, surely we can devisea solution to the farm labor problem. One of the philosophical foundation-stones upon whichour civili- zation is proudly based is the belief that aman is more important than an object, that human rights, in other words,are more important than property rights. Since we proclaim this view to the world it does not seem to be too much to suggest thatwe start acting as if we believed it.

4 V

Introduction

As late as 1910, one out of every three Americans lived on a family farm. Today the 11.5 million people living on the nation's farms represent less than 6 per cent of the population. In the last eight years 25 per cent of America's small farms have disappeared, but farm land has decreased only 4 per cent.

The current agricultural revolution is transforming the traditional American independent family farm into a faceless financial giant whose relationship to the soil is one of control and exploitation, and whose financial involvements with other industrial giants often difficult to traceform a network of fantastic proportions. From time to time, the financial pages of the New York Times yield glimpses of American agriculture, 1960's- style. For several months during 1966, Hunt Foods, one of California's biggest "farmers," and probably best known for its tomato sauce, turned up in a fight for control of Crucible Steel. It got into the Illinois Appellate Court when dissident stockholders charged a conspiracy to turn control of Crucible over to a group headed by the finance committee chairman of Hunt Foods and Industries (who was also chairman of the Wheeling Steel board). Hunt Foods was reported to have an important stake in ABC, the McCall Corporation, and the Canada Dry Corporation, as well as in Wheeling and Crucible Steels. Comparing Hunt's 1965 and 1966 earnings during thequar- ters ending March 31, the figures were up from $3,538,000 to $4,439,000. A similar kind of fight for control brought publicity early in 1967 to the Holly Sugar Corporation, second largest producer of beet sugar in the United States. The main contenders were Houston Oil Field Material Company, Inc. (Homco), which holds the largest number of Holy shares, and Western Nuclear, with which the Holly directors planned to merge.

5 It has also been reported that the Greyhound Corporation, " 'looking for a source' that can supply canned goods, frozen goods and the like to the company's $115 million food service operations,"is discussing a tie-up with the giant food company of Libby, McNeil and Libby. The Kern County Land Company of San Francisco, known for its successful evasion of the 160-acre limitationon use of federally financed irrigation water, reported its secondquarter earnings as up 13 per cent over 1965. The six months' gross revenue was $86,315,000 compared with $76,593,000 theyear before. Accord- ing to the Times for June 6, 19%16, "the diversified corporationis engaged primarily in oil and gas production, the manufactureof automotive parts and 'land use' including agriculture, cattle, and real estate." Cattle, tomatoes, sugar, vegetablesAmer-an agriculturecon- trolling or controlled by oil, steel, realestate, communications American industry. They are two sides of ti,3same coin today, and any understanding of what has been happening to the small farmer and the farm worker must start with that knowledge. Farm workers, through many years, have strived againstgreat odds to achieve the dignity and decent living standards that other American workers have enjoyed. The relativewage position of hired farm workers is getting worse,even though their average hourly wage has risen. Farm workers have been deniedmost of the protections of social legislation secured by other workers,on the grounds that "agriculture is different." Although theysuffer from unemployment more than most workers, their incomeshave no protection under unemployment insurance. Although agriculture is the third most hazardous industry, workers often lack work- lion. Harrison A. Willis :i. °, Jr. U.S. Senator (New Jersey) Chairman, Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor be covered. This is only three per cent When the National Labor Relations of the farms in the United States, but Act was passed three decades ago, the these farms employ more than American farm was primarily a family 3o per cent of the farm labor. operation. Farming is now big In 1966 we took an historic first step business. My bill proposes to bring the toward rectifying the economic injustice big corporate farm and its employees which has plagued farm workers by under the collective bargaining enacting minimum wage coverage for provisions of the NLRA. them. Extending to them the same Under the bill, as introduced collective bargaining rights as are now (S. 8, 9oth Congress), only those farms enjoyed by workers in other industries whose interstate shipments amount to will be the second major step toward more than $gothousand a year would economic justice for farm workers.

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Ft. ol. , ". Grant E. Averill men's compensation. Children of farm workers are not protected to the same extent as other children under the Fair Labor Stan- dards Act, and since incomes are so low, the whole family must work when it can, to help out. Above all, farm workers, when they organize to help themselves, are not protected in their right to bargain collectively with their employers,, as are other industrial workers. They are subject to reprisal as well as refusal; to eviction, dismissal, and terror. The myth has been carefully fostered that independent family farmers, themselves struggling for survival, would be hard hit or even bankrupt, by raising standards for farm workers. But small farmers are not the prime employers; rather, since their products compete in the market with the products of the corporate giants who hire most farm workers, their own incomes are driven down toward the level of the hired farm workers. The top 9 per cent of all farms pay more than 70 per cent of the total annual farm wage bill. More than 30 per cent of all expendi- tures for hired farm labor is made by one-half of one per cent of the very largest farms. The first federal minimum wage bill including agricultural workers, passed in 1966, covers fewer than 390,000 farm workers, most of whom are employed by the large "agribusiness" farms. Similarly, the proposed extension of the National Labor Relations Act to cover workers in agriculture would affect only 3 per cent of the farmsthose whose shipments in interstate commerce amount to more than $50,000 a year. It is time these great commercial establishments met the standards and responsibilities that their industrial counterpartsoften in the same corporate structuremust meet. American agriculture has changed. Public awareness has changed as well. The past two years have seen repeated evidence that this time the efforts of farm workers to organize and build a place for themselves in our national life will not fail. This is a part of their story.

7 Farm Workers and The National Labor RelationsAct

The farm WOrker does not ask for charityor special privi- lege. All he seeks is that the national labor policy,applied to all other industry, be applied to himas well. All that he asks is that the machinery established by Congress,to re- solve labor-management problems and settleany question of representation, be made availableto him. But it is not available. So farm workersmust seek bargaining rights through theirown resources, with all the turmoil and disruption that is supposedto be a thing of the past. George Meany, President, AFL-CIO' In an age when thereare labor unions for everyone from firemen to newspaper reporters, why should it beso difficult for farm workers to organize? The problem would begreatly eased if ten words"shall nn t includeany individual employed as an agricultural laborer"--were struck fromone of the most powerful laws our nation has ever written. This revision would enable farm workers to join the millions of industrial workerswho have the protection of the National Labor Relations Act guaranteeingtheir right to organize into unions andto bargain collectively.

What the National Labor Relations Act Does

The National Labor Relations Actstates that an employer must sit down with, bargain with, and discuss grievances with elected representatives of his workers so that theycan share in the decisions which crucially affect their lives. Administration of the law rests with the National Labor Relations Board, madeup of five members appointed by the President of the United States. The National Labor Relations Board conducts electionsamong workers of an employer to determine whetheror not the majority

8 wish to have a union represent them in their relationship with the employer. The National Labor Relations Act embodies this essential, democratic principle of the right to vote, the significance of which was eloquently put by Winston Churchill: At the bottom of all tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paperno amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point? In order to protect workers in their right to organize, the National Labor Relations Board is given the task of investigating charges of unfair labor practices of both employers and unions. Employers are forbidden by law to interfere with workers' organizing efforts, to refuse to bargain in good faith, to discriminate against workers for union activity. They cannot, for example, organize a "company" union or show favoritism toward one union over another; they cannot fire, or refuse to hire, workers for reasons of union membership; they cannot refuse to deal with workers' representatives because the workers are out on strike. For their part, labor unions are prohibited from engaging in such activities as coercion, secondary boycotts, refusing to bargain collectively in good faith, and charging excessive union initiation fees. Some specific examples of these unfair labor practices would lie: picketing in such a way that nonstriking workers are physical barred from entering the plant; making threats that workers will lose jobs unless they support the union's activities. The NLRB examines cases brought to it by individual workers, unions, and employers, and decisions are based upon field investigation and public hearings. Typical decisions may outlaw an employer-dominated union; require a union to refund dues im- properly collected; require an employer to reinstate all workers laid off or fired as a result of union activity.3

Why Farm Labor Was Excluded From the NLRA When the original bill was written in 1935 it included farm workers. According to Sam Zagoria, in 1967 a member of the National Labor Relations Board, "The father of the National Labor Relations Act, Senator Wagner, described his bill as based on the principle that 'democracy cannot work unless it is honored in the factory as well as the polling booth; and that men cannot be truly free in b:Idy and in spirit unless their freedom extends into the places where they earn their daily bread.' "4 But the bill was reported out of Committee two months later with

9 farm workers specifically excluded. Adequate justification was never given. The Senate report stated "administrative reasons," and the House was equally vague. Representative Marcantonio fought against the exclusion in his minority report of the House Committee on Labor:

I.I ..respectfully submit that there is not a single solitary reason why agricultural workers should not be included under the provisions of this bill. [The same reasons urged for the adoption of this bill in behalf of industrial workers] are equally applicable in the case of agricultural workers, in fact more so as their plight calls for immediate ond prompt action.5 But the bill's sponsor in the House, ' presentative Connery, chairman of the Labor Committee, oppo. the inclusion of farm workers at that time :

...The committee discussed this matter carefully in executive session and decided not to include agricultural workers. We hope that the agricultural workers will be taken care of....I am in favor of giving agricultural workers every protection, but just now I believe in biting off one mouthful at a time. If we can get this bill through and get it working properly, there will be opportunity later, and I hope soon, to take care of the agricultural workers.6 It has been thirty-two years since Congress took its first bite, and farm labor has been neglected four times since when the Act has been amended.

What Exclusion From the NLRA Means To Farm Workers

As things stand now, growers can literally deny the existence of a farm labor union. It is common practice for them to return letters from union leaders unopened. Because a farm employer is not required by law to enter into this relationship, in order to bring him to the bargaining table farm workers are forced to strike, picket, and boycott. In essence, the struggle has been to try to establish grower recognition of a union representing the workers. Wages, hours, and working and living conditions are usually the issues which touch off a strike, but the real question has been whether the employer will sit down and negotiate with his workers. Can a union even continue to exist if it is not acknowledged by the employer involved? The near-hundred-year history of farm labor unions attests to the fact that they cannot survive in a dy- namic way unless some foothold is secured in the traditional collective bargaining process

10 1

First Organizing Attempts in. California

California's history of farm labor unions begins in the late 1880's when Chinese immigrants moved out to the rural areas andpro- vided a cheap and abundant labor supply for the rapidly developing farm systems in the valleys. As a racial minority subject to intimidation from the white community, the Chinesewere never in a position to form unions for purposes of collective bargaining, but they did develop what amounted to private employment agencies, which recruited and hired Chinese farm laborers. These protective associations, known as tongs, became the basis for the labor contractor system later utilized by other minority groups. The tongs, as described in 1888, "are very rarely heard of, but nevertheless exist and are very powerful. In case of a strike or boycott they are fierce and determined. .making a bitter and prolonged fight."' The Chinese were followed in succeedingyears by Japanese, Hin- dustani, Filipinos, and Mexicans, for whomeven low farm labor wages were an improvement over their former situation. Grower re- liance upon this constantly replenished labor pool made it impossible for any durable labor unions to develop, for theywere quickly submerged by immigrants who would work for less than the union demands. A pattern of racial conflict developedas each successive group jockeyed to become the growers' source of cheap- est labor. (This tradition of flooding the bottom lasted, often with the cooperation of government, until 1964, when Congress calleda halt to mass importation of Mexicans during the harvest seasons.)

The "Wobblier" Organize Farm Workers

Each group, like the Chinese, tried to organize separately and engage in strikes, but until the appearance in 1905 of the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the "Wobblies,"no efforts were

11 made to organize workers on a large scale. The Wobblies were formed by a merger of the Western Federation of Miners and the American Labor Union, groups of industrially organized workers who left the early, craft-controlled American Federation of Labor. The IWW was opposed to centralizing power at the top and wanted to organize the skilled and unskilled, urban and rural workers across the country into "One Big Union," with the aim of achieving eventual worker ownership of industries. Their strength lay in the rough frontier areas, where workers had no protecticn and law was the rule of the strongest. During the days of the Klondike Gold Rush (beginning in 1896), thousands of men made their way up the Pacific coast hoping to find in Alaska their pot of gold. Not a few ran out of money on the way up and settled instead on the rich forest lands of the Pacific Northwest. It was here that the highly seasonal lumbering industry had its start, and gave rise to the wandering "bindle stiff," who worked sometimes in the lumber yards of the north, sometimes in the farmlands to the south, living during the off-seasons in the first "skid rows" of the urban industrial centers. For several years the Wobblies worked with these bindle stiffs both in the cities where they holed up during the winter and in the rural areas where they sought employment. The Wobblies found they had to establish their freedom to speak before they could organize workers. In Fresno, California, they demanded the right to maintain headquarters, to hold public meetings, to distribute information. That struggle won, they went on to San Diego in 1912, where a local Vigilante Committee formed to meet them.2 This practice of vigilantism, where groups of citizens take what they consider to be the law into their own hands, is not foreign to California history. Carey McWilliams describes the Vigilance Com- mittees of 1850 and 1856 (whose members were of the merchant and propertied classes) and says: "During the period when the vigilantes were in action, they completely usurped the functions of governmental officials, defied the Governor of the State, conducted their own trials, equipped and drilled an armed force, and oper- ated in effect as an insurrectionary junta."3 Of the San Diego encounter Carey McWilliams wrote: " ...The vigilantes rounded up all persons even renotely suspected of being wobblies and marched them, one night, to Sorrento. There the wobblies were made to...kiss the American flag and sing the national anthem, while hundreds of vigilantes stood about armed with revolvers, knives, clubs, black jacks, and black snake whips. Then they were marched to San Onofre and driven into a cattle pen and systematically slugged and beaten. After a time they were taken out of the pen and beaten with clubs and whips as, one at a time, they were made 'to run the gantlet.' "4

12 The Golden Years of American Agriculture

1910 to 1914 marked the period of agriculture's greatest prosperity. * But if these were successful years for farmers, the picture was considerably different for the workers. In August, 1913, the high point of Wobbly organizing, a situation developed which showed in frightening detail how farm workers were exploited while the growers reached unheard-of prosperity. As was the practice of the day, E. B. Durst, a hop grower in Wheatland, California, had advertised in newspapers throughout California and Nevada for 2,700 workers, when in fact he required only 1,500 to harvest his crop. Twenty-eight hundred people came from all over the west. Half of them were aliens, and 7 interpreters were needed, for 27 nationalities were represented among 235 men in one working gang alone. Destitute, the 1,000-odd extra workers could not move on, and conditions at the camp were intolerable :tents were rented from Durst at 75 cents a week; workers were forced to use his store as he forbade local grocers to make deliveries; there were 9 outdoor toilets for 2,800 people; drinking water was not allowed in the fields, since Durst's cousin had a lemonade concession there, at 5 cents a glass; a relative also owned the lunchtime "stew wagon." Finally, at a mass meeting in the workers' camp, veteran Wobbly organizer Blackie Ford "dramatically held a sick baby up to the crowd and shouted 'It's for the kids we are doing this.' " Into the tense, emotion-filled crowd strode sheriff's deputies. One fired a shot to "quiet the mob." Immediately, a riot ensued, during the course of which a District Attorney, deputy sheriff, and two workers were killed. The National Guardas called out, and all over California Wobblies were arrested. Leading Wobbly organizers Ford and Suhr were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.5 The Wheatland Riot brought the Wobblies nationwide attention, and after 1915 the most energetic group within the IWW was the Agricultural Workers Organization. The pre-World War I depression and the loss of urban jobs drove many workers to the Wheat Belt, and Wobbly organizing shifted to that region. Departures were made from the basic strategy used in Califor- nia. It was agreed not to spend union energies again on free

* During these years, called the parity years, farmers were considered to have gottenoot'' of parity, or their fair share of the national income. Today when an iundance of certain crops considerably lowers the price and threatens the farm ,conomy, the government can step in and buy up amounts of the product to make prices go back up. On specified crops, farmers are granted direct benefit or rental payments in return for reducing acreage. The objective is to keep farm income as near parity (i.e., the purchasing power of 1910-14) as possible.

13 speech fights, which had antagonized other elements of the farming communities. The change of tactic improved relations with growers and so made it easier to reach wage agreements.Also, "members were instructed never to hold out to the bitter end. In case of a strike, those directly involved were tobring other members of the union onto the struck job in order to strike again or to slow up production...."6 Largely as a result of the new strategy in the Wheat Belt, by the end of 1916 the IWW's Agricultural Workers Organization "had en- rolled nearly 20,000 workers, and its momentum was such that it was reported to have carried the total IWWmembership from 5,000 in the spring of 1916 to over 70,000 at its peak in 1917."7 Since the Wobblies posed a threat to the existing economic system and to every power structure down to the local level, they were often met with repressive actions by police authorities (and occasionally by vigilantes, as we have seen ). There were numerous mass arrests of strikers, usually with totaldisregard of civil liberties. The fact that the Wobblies grew steadily in the face of violence and intimidation indicates the strength of their appeal as well as the desperate condition of masses ofworkers during these years before the rise of American trade unionism. It is difficult to say what would have happened to Wobbly organizing efforts if their opposition to World War I had not led to their prosecution by the federal government. During the war the Wob- blies were charged with violation of the Espionage Act, and after the war they were prosecuted under state syndicalist laws passed during the war years. Wobbly activity returned sporadically during the twenties, but the IWW never made a successful comeback.°

The Depression Years Farm labor organizingand labor organizing in generaldur- ing the deepening depression years between 1929 and 1933 was virtually non-existent. Thousands of unemployed urban workers flooded the farm areas, and competition for jobs was bitter. In some areas wage levels of 50 cents an hour in 1929had declined to 15 and 16 cents by 1933.9 Though efforts at collective bargaining proved impossible during such labor surplus conditions, various factors contributing to labor unrest culminated in 1933 in a series of strikes unprecedented in number and size in farm labor history. New Deal legislation passed in 1932 and 1933 helped urban workers and farm owners but had no effect upon farm workers. Although the Agricultural Adjustment Act (details of which are described in the chapter on the Southern Tenant Farmers Union) was designed to revitalize the agricultural economy, benefits were

14 extended only to farmers and, theoretically, to sharecroppers. Sim- ilarly, the National Industrial Recovery Act helped urban workers but excluded farm workers from its provisions. The NIRA established maximum hours and minimum wages of $16 a week for industrial workers, and accorded them legal protection of their right to organize. By mid-1933 the upheaval in the labor market was enormous. Organizing activities went apace, and farm workers were frustrated by their complete exclusion from the NIRA statutes which were bringing revolutionary changes to other industries. The situation erupted in 1933 when a total of 56,800 farm workers went out on 61 different strikes in 17 states." One organization backed by the Communist Party, the Cannery and Agricul- tural Workers Industrial Union, capitalized on the explosive farm labor situation and led this spectacular wave of strikes. October 4, 1933, marked the high point of CAWIU strike activity. Five thousand cotton pickers in Corcoran, California, struck for 90 cents per 100 pounds, protesting the prevailing wage rate of 60 cents. Refusing even to report for work, they boycotted the ranches altogether. When strikers attended a mass meeting at the Union Hall in Pixley, California, growers stationed themselves behind cars nearby, and opened fire on the hall. Two workers were killed during the ensuing violence." The union at first had instructed the workers to remain on the various ranches, but the growers evicted them. The strikers rented a nearby ranch for use as a headquarters. Passes were issued, guards patrolled the grounds. Two nurses were present to look after the strikers and to maintain adequate sanitary conditions. The value of having a central strike camp headquarters cannot be overestimated. Wrote Paul S. Taylor and Clark Kerr:"If the pickers had been able to follow the [union's] advice to remain scat- tered on the ranches the completeness of the strike might have been seriously impaired. Union leaders could hardly have reached them....Arrangements of picket caravans and of mass meetings would have been more difficult. But...the growe-rs insisted upon evictions. With no other place to go, the strikers gathered in camps erected or enormously expanded by the emergency...."12 After modest mediation efforts the workers returned to pick cotton at a compromise wage of 75 cents per hundred pounds. The strike had lasted 24 days, during the course of which an estimated 18,000 workers had refused to report for work. That the workers, many of whom were Mexican, had been,as usual, alone against the whole community in their struggle is borne out by the statement of an undersheriff: We protect our farmers here in Kern County. They are our best people. They are always with us. They keep the country

15 going. They put us in here and they can put us out again, so we serve them. But the Mexicans are trash. They have no standard of living. We herd them like pigs." Twenty-five strikes waged in California in 1933 were spear- headed by CAWIU and involved 37,550 workers. Twenty-one of the strikes secured alast partial wage increases." CAWIU leader6 were later arrested and tried on charges of crim- inal syndicalism. The union formally dissolved on March 17, 1935. CAWIU made few inroads toward collective bargaining agreements, for it was opposed to the negotiation tactics of the established unions. A major weakness was its lack of internal democracy and its dependence upon the leadership of a few individuals.

Filipino Agricultural Laborers Association: A Modern Union

There was one interesting instance of farm labor unionizing in the 1930's which arose directly from the workers themselves, rather than from an existing organization such as the Industrial Workers of the World or CAWIU. Those who are familiar with today's United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in Delano, California, may find similarities in the Filipino Agricultural Laborers Associa- tion. In many ways it is the first thoroughly modern farm labor union, and as such it is worth studying. The Filipino Agricultural Laborers Association originated in 1939 among 6,000 Filipino asparagus pickers who walked off their

Hon. Jacob K. Javits One of the greatest achievements of the National Labor Relations Act has U.S. Senator (New Yor'.) been the almost total elimination of organizational disputes as a source of We have just celebrated the occasion strikes and lockouts. So long as agri- of the 25 millionth vote cast in secret cultural employees are denied the same ballot elections conducted by the Na- basic rights enjoyed by other employees tional Labor Relations Board. That is, under the law, the result, sooner or indeed, a notable achievement and later, must be the same kind of bitter justly deserved the recognition given to strife which preceded the Wagner Act it. But the ceremony must have had as witness the recent grape workers' somewhat of a hollow ring to the mil- strike in California. lions of agricultural employees to whom Certainly the Congress should not the orderly processes of the Board's wait until the labor-management procedures for settling organizational struggle of the 1930's repeats itself on disputes have, until now, been denied. our farms before acting.

16 jobs in Stockton, California, inprotest against a threatened wage cut. The union (later called the Federated Agricultural Laborers Association) was aided in its early days by the CIO andthe AFL but it did not then affiliate. The membership workedclosely with independent Mexican and Japanese unions, refusingto work as strikebreakers during their struggles. Late in1940 it obtained a charter from the AFL.'5 The union was composed almost entirely ofFilipino farm workers around Stockton, Sacramento, and other central valley cities. It won several important strikes and gained union recognition,wage increases, improved conditions, and writtencontracts. According to Harry Schwartz, who made intensive studiesof FALA, it saved thousands of dollars for its members bycalling the authorities' attention to the practice of some farmers of deductingworkmen's compensation payments from their employees'wages in defiance of statute. Schwartz summarized FALA's unusual features:"[It] has helped form the Philippine MercantileAssociation, a cooperative enterprise at Stockton which sells groceries andPhilippine Islands products. FALA members have been encouragedto buy shares of stock at $5.00 each....The scope of the Mercantile Association can be judged by the fact that it reported a $40,000 sales total for its first year of business, and also by itsrecent opening of a branch store."i6 Homogeneity of the membershipwas an important factor in the union's success. The workers hada common cultural past, they worked under similar conditions, and facedthe same problems. The union's goals, like those of UFWOCat present, were not limited to wage increases and recognition by growers; their activitiesencom- passed the farm workers'way of life. U.S. involvement in World War II siphoned farmworkers off to the cities, and growers turned increasinglyto Mexican laborers for harvest work. The Federated Agricultural LaborersAssociation could not withstand the competition ofa cheap labor supply and it soon collapsed.

* * *

The effects of World War II on agricultural laborare described in a later chapter. After the war farm workers entereda new phase of their struggles. The American Federation ofLabor assumed the lead in bringing attention to bearon the farm labor situation. The successor to the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, whose early history follows, was later given the first national AFL charterto organize farm workers.

17 The Southern Tenant Farmers Union

Henry Clay East was running a filling station in the early 1930's in the small cotton belt town of Tyronza, Arkansas; hewas also the constable. His friend Harry Leland Mitchell owned the dry cleaners next door. Both menwere acutely aware of the grinding poverty of the tenant farmers, Negro and white, who workedon the area's huge cotton plantations.'

Eastern Arkansas in the Thirties

The plantation system was a recent development ineastern Arkansas, for the land could not be cultivated until flood control levees were built in the early 1900's. Few of the system's paternal- istic traditions existed here since the plantationswere larger and more commercialized than in the older cotton areas, and many planters were absentee owners; supervisionwas left to the "riding boss," a "khaki-clad, gun belted, booted figure of authority,"' who in many ways took over the old role of the slaveoverseer. For their part, the sharecroppers had often migrated to the area from other

* Tenant farming arose in the aftermath of the Civil War and in many ways was a continuation of the plantation slavery which the war had supposedly ended. The newly freed Negroes owned no land or farm implements; the planters still had both, and needed labor. Instead of cash wages, the worker receiveda set share of the crop at year's end. The myriad categories of tenants gradually narrowed: the "sharecropper" turned over half of his crop to the planter, who had "furnished" seed, fertilizer, mule team, implements, food staples, and a shack to live inon his land. A share renter was one who had his own farming tools and supplies, and in return for land and a cabin he paid the planter a stipulated share of the cropas rent. As cotton prices fell toward the end of the nineteenth century, numerous small farmers lost their land, and thus many whites joined Negroes in competing for the available tenancies.

18 r

states during the twenties, and the whites, at least, hadn't had to learn the outward submission and passivity necessitated in the old South by generations of slavery. Thus conditions of unrest in this area lay closer to the surface than in any other part of the South. When the depression hit, not only did cotton prices plunge, but rural people who had gone to the cities were forced back to the cotton country, where opportunities were fewer than ever. The saw- mills of eastern Arkansas shut down, greatly increasing the numbers of unemployed, and sceptical reporters returned from the area horror-struck by the poverty, disease, and desperation of the people. A single story was typical of thousands:

et ..One woman, her name was 011ie Strong, she died beg- ging for a cup of coffee. She was the mother of eleven children....I have seen her hack crossties and haul them fifteen and twenty miles to sell them so she could get herself and the children something to eat....She chopped cotton on various plantations when she was with child. ...She went to picking when she was swelled so large she couldn't stoop over. She would have to crawl on her knees so as to be able to pick....When she died there wasn't anything to eat at all in the one-room pole cabin. The last thing she called for was a cup of coffee, but there wasn't any.''' If a tenant was "shiftless," "troublesome," or simply was no longer wanted by the landlord for any reason, he was uncere- moniously evicted; the "riding boss" knew his place would be filled immediately. One landlord, "to enforce eviction, tried in mid- winter to pull the doors and shutters off a cabin in which the cropper's wife and children huddled in thin cotton clothes. The cropper tried to resist; the landlord shot him."3 In the summer of 1933 the situation worsened. There was a huge U.S. cotton surplus and another bumper crop was expected. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, passed in the same year, required that some cotton land be plowed under to create scarcity and raise prices. In eastern Arkansas, the poverty became more acute than in other cotton-producing areas, for the growing mechanization of agriculture combined with the effects of the new AAA program left proportionately more sharecroppers without homes or work.' Few tenants could understand the sense of "plow under." Clay East told of his reaction when a government official asked him what he thought of the program : "That was it, I really blew up, I ask him if I looked like a plum damn idiot, I told [him] that all of my life I had been taught not to destroy anything that might be useful to someone or something else, I was taught to never throw an apple core or bread crust in the fire, and now he was asking me if I approved of people in rags with no sheets in the house plowing

19 under cotton." Historian Donald Grubbs adds: "As they had been trained to do, mules avoided stepping on the cotton theywere made to plow up. 'Mules have more sense than men,' said the tenants."5 Under AAA, the government compensated for the financial loss by sending benefit payments to the planters who signed yearly cotton acreage reduction contracts. Benefits were to be shared by tenant and landlord according to their interest in the crop (50-50 in the case of sharecroppers, and varying proportions for otherten- ants depending on their rental arrangements). But since the landlord signed the crmtract and the money was sent to him to distribute, few tenants ever received their share. It was of little use to com- plain to the Agriculture Department; the planters and their friends composed the local committee which would "investigate." Accord- ing to the new contract terms established a year later, sharecroppers received only one-ninth of the government benefits instead of one-half, and other classes of tenants fared little better. Asa result of the cotton contract, one representative planter's "gross income increased...from $51,554 in 1932 to $102,202 in 1934 while the average gross income of his tenants fell from $379 to $355."'

The Beginnings of STFU

It was against this background of government policy that actually '. ncreased poverty, rather than alleviating it, that H. L. Mitch& and his friend Clay East became committed to improving the lot of the sharecroppers. Both men had heard Norman Thomas speal. in Memphis during the 1932 political campaign. They secured Thomas's support for a study of the Agricultural Adjust- ment Act, which was enriching Southern planters while bringing new misery to the workers. It was during a conversation with Thomas that the idea for the Southern Tenant Farmers Unionwas conceived, and Norman Thomas was always considered its god- father although the Union never affiliated with any political party. While there was no leadership yet visible among the sharecroppers, Mitchell and East were aware that the structure of the Union nonetheless had to develop from within. They approached an outspoken white sharecropper, Alvin Nunnally, who called the first meeting early in July, 1934. Close to twenty sharecroppers, Itgro and white, came to an abandoned schoolhouse on a cotton 1..antation owned by Hiram Norcross, near Tyronza. (A popular sharecropper song of the day ran thus: "You go to the fields and work all day / 'Til after dark, and you get no pay / Justa little piece of meat and a little turn of corn / It's hell to bea sharecropper on the Norcross farm."7) From the outset it was to be a racially mixed union: the prob-

20 lems of Negro and white sharecropperswere essentially the same, though in some areas it wasnecessary initially to organize separate Negro and white locals. Looking back on that first meeting, H. L. Mitchell said, "I rememberone old white man who got up a n d said that he'd once been a member o f the Ku Klux Klan... but that everybody was in thesame boat in this fight here. Negroes were on the plantations...and the union should include both white and colored and fight for the rights of everyone."]There was also an inherent danger in havinga completely Negro union; in 1919, more than 100 Negroes who had formedone in a nearby county were killed in the "Elaine Massacre." Negroes in the Delta had heard of the Massacre andone at the first meeting had been there and narrowly escaped; the decisionto join the new union therefore took great personalcourage. Gn July 26, 1934, the organizationwas incorporated under the laws of the state of Arkansas and shortly after tookSouthern Ten- ant Farmers Union as its name. Its objectives were the relief of displaced workers; collective bargaining agreements between workers and landlords; and revamping of the Agricultural Adjustment Act.9 Mitchell and East wanted to remain in the background, but no one else was yet able to run the organization. East became the first president, and his position as constablewas a powerful force in countering the croppers' fear of joining the union and instem- ming the planters' hostilities while the littlegroup was building its strength. Mitchell's business had given him invaluable knowledge of the residents and geography of thearea, and his organizational ability made him the obvious choice forsecretary, a post he held for the life of the union. There was some confusion, in the beginning, aboutjust what unionism was. One early member commented: "When they first started talking about union, I thought itwas a new church."1° (Union meetings did have elements reminiscent of churchservices, since for many members the churchwas the only organization they had ever had contact with.) Butone thing was clear: it was open to everyone, even those who couldn't afford topay the $1.00 dues. The Negro members, who hadgrown up within the rigid society of the cotton country,were often more literate than the white sharecroppers, who were new to the plantationsystem, having been "isolated so far back in the mountains that 'you hadto pump day- light in to them.' "11 The Negroeswere also more aware of the value of cooperation with each other and thuswere easier to organize than the whites, whose fierce individualism oftenmade them less desirable as tenants, in the planters' view. From the earliest days, educationwas a major concern. In addition to calling for improvement of the utterlyinadequate rural schools for their children, STFU memberseagerly participated

21 in adult education courses organized by the Union;occasionally members were able to attend sessions at labor schools,where they could gain new understanding of their rolein the struggles of the American labor movement. The idea of cooperativeswas also cham- pioned by STFU; consumer buying clubswere formed, and an STFU cooperative farm ran successfully formany years. One of the common bonds, shared by all members,was the necessity for secrecy. An STFU memorandumon the subject stated the procedures of a union meeting: "'The Unit Leadercallsthe meeting to order. Prayer service may be heldas silentlyas possible....A Union song may be sungthis should be avoided ifit attracts attention w your meeting....Go [home) one or two ata time in different directions. Avoid the highways and roadsas much as possiblekeep away from lights of automobiles...."i2 Organiz- ers were told to keep their efforts under cover, to concentrateon building a small nucleus of reliable members. Mitchell counseled: "Never promise the workers that the Union is goingto do something for them. Let them join the Union and dosome- thing themselves."n By the end of 1934 a situation developed which threw the Southern Tenant Farmers Union into the public spotlight for the first time. Many sharecroppers and tenants received noticefrom their landlords to move elsewhere. The decrease incotton acreage had proportionately decreased the need for workers. Moreover,the landlords wanted to become the sole beneficiaries of thegovernment's largess, and the cotton contract terms actually encouraged planters to shift from keeping tenants to hiringwage laborthe

H. L. Mitchell toward agricultural workers is correct, because it will take a lot of money to Co-founder, STFU; organize and establish a strong union International Representative, and the returns on the investment made Amalgamated Meat Cutters and will be slow in coming. Butcher Workmen, AFL-CIO If the leadership (of organized labor) In the beginning (when the Southern really wanted to organize the uncrga- Tenant Farmers Un;on was first organized, it could be done. It wo:dd also nized) we never received any actual help if we could bring agricultuial support from organized labor. The local workers under the NotionA Labor Re- labor people in Memphis said...that lations Act. no one could organize a union among All it would take to organize the people as poor as the sharecroppers. farm workers on the nation's larger It depends on what one's approach farm enterprises would be determina- to the labor movement is. If organized tion by organized labor to get the job labor is just a business operation, then done. Organized labor has themoney. the attitude of the trade union leaders \ fanpower is available.

a benefits did not have to be shared with hired workers. The planters were able to profit immensely by the tenants' powerk.ssness and their ignorance of the complicated provisions of the cottoncontract. Tenants demanding their rights were evicted and could easily be replaced, if needed, with workers who thronged the roads; home- less and desperate to feed their families, they would signover their benefit rights in order to find a place. The displacement resulting from outright evictions was compounded by an old tenantcustom: as the year-end approached, many would seek a better farming arrangement on another plantation. But unaware of the extent of the upheaval around them, thousands took to the roads onlyto find no "places" to be had, and their old ones taken when they triedto return. Said one bewildered cropper, "There was plenty of work, and what I don't understand is why it ain't thatway now, 'cause the land is still here."" The issue came to a head in January, 1935, when itwas learned that only Southern Tenant Farmers Union memberswere being evicted from the huge Norcross plantation. STFU leaders decided to file for a court decision on the question of whether tenantswere protected by Section 7 of the cotton contract whichwas clearly in- tended to prevent their displacementas a result of the cotton reduction program. Although the suitwas eventually lost, the issue had been brought into public debate. Eviction of sharecropperson grounds of union membership scared the AAA;even its supporters saw that it would lay the program open to strong criticism. The AAA thereupon decided to send an impartial observerto investigate sharecropper conditions. Mary Connor Myers,a brilliant Boston lawyer, was dispatched to Arkansas, where sheinterviewed hundreds of sharecroppers on dozens of plantations. She soon sent a telegram to the AAA: "HAVE HEARDONE LONG STORY HUMAN GREED...SECTION SEVEN ONLY ONE 10F] SECTION'S OF] CONTRACT BEING OPENLYAND GENERALLY VIOLATED....CROPPERS...ALL PATHETI- CALLY PLEASED GOVERNMENT HAS SENT SOMEONETO LISTEN TO THEM...." A newspaper editorialized, "If she finds the fire, Secretary Wallace will put it out." Full disclosureswere ex pected; the sharecroppers were confident. As the weekswent by with no word on the report, "... anavalanche of letters descended upon AAA and the Department of Agriculture, the first timeany effort related to the STFU ever called fortha nationwide response. "' 5 But the report was never made public, never actedupon. In March of 1935 began a reign of terroras STFU stepped up its organizing activities : "Meetings were banned and brokenup; members were falsely accused, arrested and jailed; convictedon trumped up charges and thrown into prison; reliefwas shut off; Union members were evicted from the land by thehundreds;

23 ar,...,adwara L- Aft A --41".-116""

Cotton chopping in the Delta U.S.D.A. Photograph homes were riddled with bullets from machine guns; churcheswere burned, and schoolhouses were stuffed with hay and the floors removed; highways were patrolled night and day by armed vigilantes looking for the leaders; organizerswere beaten, mobbed and murdered and the entire country was terrorized."' Planters, with the aid of postal erpioyees, conducted mail- opening campaigns to discover which tenantswere union members. Many of STFU's leaders and members had to flee for their lives across the river to Memphis. When the terrorism died down a few months later, however, the union's organizational structurewas still intact, and it had gained vital outside support through the nationwide publicity resulting from the brutality and lawlessness.

The Cotton Strikes In the fall of 1935 an estimated 4,000 cotton pickers responded to STFU's call and walked off the fields for ten days just as the cotton was ripe, in an effort to raise their wages; "...thousands suddenly were confined in bed with the `mis'ry' or found it necessary to go fishing to replenish the family larder."17 Planters revived their mail-opening campaigns, and relief authorities near the strike area severed payments to some 4,500 re- cipients," thus forcing them into the cotton fields. * H. L. Mitchell described the strategy behind STFU's first strike: "Our system, used for the first time, was to have handbills printed and the delegates would take back several hundred copies of this handbill and then on a specified night, these handbillswere dis- tributed all over the plantations at the same time. The handbills were put on fence posts and telephone poles, barn doors, every- wheresaying that a strike was on and to stay out of the fields. It was the most effective demonstration that could be imagined. In three counties where we had just a few members, practically all work stopped....The result of the strike was that the planters raised wages to 750 per 100 pounds, and in some places to $1. There weren't any negotiations. There never have been."" The success of the strike strengthened the union. H. L. Mitchell

SA variation of this traditional tactic is still effective: a headline in the March 3, 1962, Arkansas Gazette read: "County Judge Slashes Surplus Food List to Pro- vide Local Labor for Cotton Harvest," and the practice has been widely used in the 1960's in the neighboring Delta counties of Mississippi.

2 4 wrote on September 31, 1935: "Over thirty new locals have been organized within the past 45 days, andmany more will be during this month. Two were reported today."2° Early in 1936 evictions of STFU members rapidly increased, and a new wave of violence began. A dynamite stick was thrown into a tent colony which had been set up for some of the evictees; a witness to a brutal breaking up of a union meetingwas murdered. As usual, local law officers joined and even led planters and riding bosses in the terrorism, and a second Elaine Massacrewas feared. In spite of both state and federal indifference, however, the violence finally subsided. A second STFU strike was launched in May of 1936, thistime at the height of the cotton chopping season. (In the spring rains, weeds thrive along with the young cotton plants and must be de- stroyed or they will choke the crop.) With increased membership, the strike strategy expanded somewhat. Said Mitchell: "...White farmers who owned their tiny farms but who, during thecotton chopping and picking seasons went to the plantations to work for wages ...took the lead in the strike. They organized...the `Marches'...with each man about 6 or 8 feet apart, forminga long thin picket line....They began with possibly a hundredmen, to start the day's march of 25 or 30 miles through the plantations. And when they came to a plantation where peoplewere out in the cotton fields, the marchers would call out to the people at work.... There was no violencejust people linedup, walking down the roads singing and calling on others to join them."21 The governor sent in 25 National Guardsmen, whoset up machine guns at key crossroads. One of themwas trained on two Negroes who were "a little impudent." Terrorism raged fortwo weeks after the strike began.22 In spite ofnumerous official investi- gado. s all through these years (often inspired by brutal incidents of violence that made headlines all across the country),no effective federal or state action was ever taken fa,- 7)1iticalreasons. The strike ended in failure, partly bee-Fe the planters were forewarned of the elaborate plans that hadbeen laid two months in advance. But the real reasons lay deep within the rigidstruc- ture of the plantation system. The sharecroppers were pitted against large landcwners who controlled nearlyevery aspect of their lives. Under conditions little different from today,not only did the sharecroppers live in the planter's shacks, theywere often in arrears at his store; his influence over local law enforcementwas considerable. (It was not unusual to find long-time resident sharecroppers working off sentences of "vagrancy" on privately-owned "prison farms.") The landowners also had close relationships with each other as a result of marriage and family ties, longstanding friendships, and similar economic interests. A few planters initially

25 unopposed to the union were soon "persuaded" to the position of the majority. It was nearly impossible for striking sharecroppers to find a crack in this solid front of the opposition. But while the STFU failed to halt the disastrous effects of AAA, it nevertheless had a far-reaching impact. Wisconsin Senator Rob- ert La Follette, Jr., attended a fund-raising dinner for STFU in 1935. One of the guests was a sharecropperbeaten, bandaged who had recently been attacked by planters' henchmen for his membership in STFU. La Follette was deeply shocked, and in the spring of 1936 he headed a Senate committee which launched the most extensive investigation of the violations of free speech and the rights of labor in American history. It led toan expose of the illegal methods used to destroy unions in spite of their rightsguar- anteed under the National Labor Relations Act. Ironically, while farm workers had been excluded from coverage under the NLRA, passed in 1935, their struggles helped other workers whowere covered. John L. Lewis stated that organization of the giant CIO industrial unions would not have been possible without thespot- light thrown by the La Follette Committee on management-financed terrorism.23 According to one authority, "The La Follette Civil Lib- erties Committee derived directly out of the STFU.""

Transition

Lacking a financially secure membership, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union hal been dependent uponmany organizations including the Workers Defense League, the League for Industrial Democracy, the American Civil Liberties Union, and churchgroups for publicity and legal and financial aid. Mitchell commented: "If it had not been for outside support... wewould never have been able to contim.e."25 In March of 1937, the first National Sharecroppers Weekwas held under the joint sponsorship of the Southern TenantFarmers Union and the Workers Defense League, with thepurpose of making the country aware of sharecroppers' conditions and raising funds for the union. (In 1943 an organizationwas formed to expand fund raising activities, and for the next sixteenyears the National Sharecroppers Fund contributed three- quarters of its annual income to the support of STFU and itssuccessors and helped to publicize their struggle. NSF still continues its work among low- income rural people in the South.) During the early summer of 1937 the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and other unions with similar interests decided to unite into one national union. H. L. Mitchell shared in the formation of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of z6 America, and in July of that year the new union received a charter from the Congress of Industrial Organizations. STFU affiliation with UCAPAWA was brief. Mitchell had joined the national effort with the assumption that his union would retain its autonomy, but this was not to be the case. The president of UCAPAWA wanted a highly centralized federation with STFU dues going into the international treasury. A year later 112 of 178 STFU locals voted to withdraw from UCAPAWA, which was later expelled by the CIO as a communist-controlled union. The work of the STFU, again independent, went on. In south- eastern Missouri in 1939, planters carried out a mass eviction of 1,500 sharecroppers; they were told they could become wage hands or get out. Negroes and whites camped out in a snowstorm along Highway 60 and Highway 61 for more than a week. The public was aroused, and labor unions rallied to prod government officials into providing relief aid to the evictees. Mitchell enlisted the support of Mrs. Roosevelt, and the Missouri National Guard was instructed to send tents and blankets. The relief didn't have time to arrive. The planters retreated, broke up the demonstration, and let the workers return to their shacks. The Missouri demonstration is a fitting conclusion to STFU's early history. The Union remained active during the war years, but it is not until 1946 that the sequel begins. STFU's successor affiliated with the American Federation of Labor; its story is in a later chapter. It was years before the work of the Southern Tenant Fann- ers Union could be evaluated. For a while, even Mitchell saw only STFU's failure to gain collective bargaining agreements and not the Union's salutory effect upon the machinery of government and upon public opinion. In 1941 he unhappily assessed STFU: "Though a few hundred members regularlypay dues, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union does not constitute a trade-union. There is no basis for trade-unionism in southern agriculture with conditions such as prevail."26 Only later, when developments within the government finally demonstrated official concern for the sharecroppers, could Mitchell make a more accurate appraisal of the union's achievements: "The formation of the President's Farm Tenancy Commissionwas, let us say, due in part to the organization of the union of sharecroppers. If there had not been an organization of sharecroppers making a noise, Roosevelt would never have establisheda farm security administration or done anything about the problems of farm tenancy." 2'

27 Hawaii and Its "Little NLRA"

Hawaii is the only state in which all workers in large-scale agriculture are organized, and have been for twentyyears. They have an adequate minimum wage law; they have comprehensive medical plans; they are given paid holidays and vacations; they receive sick pay and severance pay; they are entitled to workmen's compensation; they are covered under the state's collective bargaining law. Hawaii's success story did not come about easily. Unionorga- nizers, in fact, faced formidable, monolithic opposition fromsugar plantation owners. Even as lateas 1946 (the year in which most plantations were successfully organized in Hawaii), the situation was this: "Through a system of interlocking marriages and direc- torates. the five companiesCastle & Cooke, Alexander & Bald- win, American Factors, C. Brewer & Company, and Theo. H. Davies & Company--own Hawaii. Their officers and directors control 96% of the sugar plantations, three irrigation companies, three banks, five public utilities, four pineapple companies,two steamship companies, two newspapers, two insurance companies, and at least seventeen other miscellaneous concerns."'

Strikes by Racial Groups Unsuccessful The first recorded strike in Hawaii occurred in 1841 when Hawaiian workers walked off the fields of Koloa plantationon Kauai for eight days demanding 25 cents a day,or about 2 cents an hour. The workers lost." Hawaiian planters had used the principle of "divide and rule" for generations. Over the years workerswere imported from China, Portugal, the South Sea islands, Japan, Norway, Puerto Rico, Korea, Spain, Russia, and the Philippines. Eachgroup was intentionally

2g brought in to preventany other from feeling secure enough to strike, or to demand collectivebargaining rights.3 This statement appeared in the official planters'publication, The Planters Monthly, in 1883: "By employing differentnationalities, there is less danger of collusion... among laborers, and the employer, on the whole, obtains better discipline."4 It took years for the workersto understand the importance of inter-racial unity; "the 'pre-history' ofsuccessful unionism here is replete with tragic tales of labororganizations, wage movements, strikes, and hopes shatteredon the twin rocks of racial exclusive- ness and racial strikebreaking."5 A strike of Japanese workerson Oahu in 1909 failed, not for lack of organizational structure,but because it wasrun along racial lines. The reaction of the planters'association was to hire strikebreakers of other nationalities, andpay them 117 per cent more than the strikers had received. Althougha Higher Wages Associa- tion was formed in response tonews articles about racial discrimination, the strike failed after 13 weeks. Both the Japanese and the Filipinos,although they had separate labor organizations, nevertheless sufferedthe same abuses, looked for the same remedies. The Japanesewent on strike again in 1920. Evicted from plantationproperty, they camped in Honolulu parks, where hundreds died of epidemicinfluenza. In 1924, 1,600 Filipinos struck for eight months, involving23 of the 45 plantations. During the course of the strike, 16 strikersand 4 policemenwere killed. With a brutality rare in Hawaii,the National Guard producedma- chine guns and teargas. Sixty strike leaders were jailed for four years; thus deprived of its leadership, the strikeeffort failed. The last strike attempt alongracial lines was by Filipinoson Maui in 1937; the strikewas launched by the Filipino labor organization called the "Vibora Luviminda."Efforts were successful in stopping the harvesting but the Filipinoscould not convince other groups to strike in other areas of the crop'sproduction. It became clear that the success of the strike,though limited, was attributable to financial support from the Japanese andthe CIO unions. The Vibora Luviminda diedan anachronism; henceforth seriousorga- nizing efforts would not be limitedto racial unions. Sometimes, when demandswere specific and did not dangerously affect the whole system, the workerswon minor victories. In May of 1904, 1,600 men walked offa plantation at Waipahu in a ten- point protest against theiroverseer. He was fired and the men went back to work. Within the confining limits ofpaternalism, the planters had some sense of responsibility for their workers; theplantation system was completely dependentupon institutionalized inequality, but brutality wasrare on the personal level. "That the planters

29 were benevolent is undeniable. Their record...is the more remarkable if the policies of large agricultural employersin Califor- nia at the time are taken as the standard of comparison."' But the price exacted for even such comparative benevolence was an unswerving loyalty on the part of the workers to the plantation system. "Labor organizationwas an anomaly. To join a labor union constituted a breach of faith, an act oftreason of the highest order, sapping the foundations ofa whole social order."7 Yet conditions remained so deplorable that efforts to organize recurred. The plantationsconsistentlyrejectedworker-ownershipof homes, a more modernmeans of improving and stabilizing the work force. On the contrary, the old perquisitesystem, analogous to "furnish" in the Southern states,was expanded because it allowed the planter nearly complete controlover his workers. The system worked smoothly, with few disruptions,for a generation or so. Because agricultural workwent on without respite throughout the year, manymore children went to school than was common among children of farm workersoften migrantson the mainland. One man recalled his student days in Hawaii:"The public school system perhaps without realizing it createdunrest and disorganization. Here the children learn aboutdemocracy or at least the theory of it....We also learned a bit of self-respect. We didn't have to kiss any man's feet."' Education, by the thirties, had done much to break downthe racial barriers of language and culture. Amore stable labor supply had evolved by this time, too; native Hawaiianworkerssecond and third generation descendants of immigrantshadincreased from 12 per cent to 45 per cent of the total.'

Hawaii's Waterfront Is Organized

The general strike in San Francisco in 1934was to signal the turning point in Hawaii's organizing history.Most of Hawaii's ex- ports landed in San Francisco, where the International Longshore- men's and Warehousemen's Unionwas successfully organizing the dockworkers who loaded and unloaded shipments. WhileSan Fran- cisco dockworkers were struggling to obtaincontracts, dockworkers in Hawaii risked nothing and registered few demands.The upshot was that "Lack of unionization at one end of its operations poseda threat to the survival of unions at the other end.'" Attempts were therefore made to organize Hawaii's waterfront. In order to counter the ILWU efforts,one of the leading companies, Castle & Cooke, began to improve working conditions.They in effect tried to satisfy union demands before they reachedthe bargaining table in order to make unionismseem unnecessary (an

30 illegal tactic under the National Labor Relations Act). To this end they opened a recreation hall, increased wages, and provided assistance for employees who were sick or disabled. In 1937 the Na- tional Labor Relations Board found Castle & Cooke guilty of vio- lating the rights of workers. Finally, after 10 months of striking, Honolulu longshoremen won contracts in May, 1941.

World War II

But World War II put an end to organizing for a while, although the effects of the war economy were to be contributing factors in the subsequent union organizing in Hawaii. The Islands underwent a period of martial law that lasted from Pearl Harbor to mid-1944. Hawaii was divided into a military sector, where wages were high, and a civilian sector (including the plantations and their workers), where wages were frozen at the prewar level. Although the cane and pineapple workers could not benefit from the prosperity, they nevertheless were exposed to the possibility of a social mobility heretofore unknown in Hawaii. New roads freed workers from their isolated plantation outposts: the free spending of the troops increased the workers' dissatisfaction with their lot. One unhappy result of the war was the distrust shown the older Japanese workers, whose ties to Japan were felt to be still very strong. The elements of the Islands' power structureadministra- tion, press, clergy, labortherefore looked to the younger Japanese for articulation of their peoples' needs, since they had been born in the Islands and were considered loyal Americans. The young spokesmen for the Japanese segment of Hawaii's population were modern and educated, eager for unionism.

Plantation Workers Organize

If the workers themselves were ready to organize, the members of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union were equally eager to recruit them. After the war, "Upon the re- moval of military controls, plantation workers embraced unionism virtually overnight, sometimes organizing on their own before the organizers dispatched from Honolulu could arrive. With unfilled jobs of all kinds everywhere apparent, joining a union became, for the first time. ..riskless in terms of immediate opportunities?" 11 The ILWU had organized Hawaii's waterfront before the war, but the union's success depended upon expansion. In order to effectively control the docks the ILWU also had to control production at its source--the plantations. It was generally thought that prog-

31 ress would be made only if Hawaiian workersorganized along the same lines as their employers, covering all plantations,mills, and ports from which the "Big Five" drewrevenue. Since the dockworkers and sugar workers had thesame employers, it was only logical that they find strengthin the same union, the ILWU. Curtis Aller comments on the ramifications of theHawaiian labor situation: "Given this concentration ofeconomic power cr. the one side and the parallel concentrationof union power on the other, the quality of labor relations attainsa unique importance. Conflict between these two giants acquiressome of the overtones of a civil war as both commit their fullresources to battle once it occurs."'2 The ILWU had firmly establisheditself as wielding apower which nearly equaled that heldby a few plantation families for generations. Largely asa result of the ILWU's efforts, in May, 1945, the Hawaii Employment RelationsAct was passed, whichwon collective bargaining rights for agriculture.Even with this legal guarantee the battle might have beena costly one, were it not for the combination of a limited labor supplyand the realism of the growers. Aller makes these two pointsvery well: "The plantations' historical policy of maintaininga surplus labor pool had been de- stroyed. No longer able to replaceworkers the plantationswere loath to take retaliatory actionagainst union members."'3 Further, "Union officials have stated, and therecord supports them, that the sugar companies made surprisinglylittle effort to interfere with the organization of workers....The Hawaiian Pineapple Company, the largest pineapple producer,formally instructed its foremen by written memorandum that therewas to be no interference with the efforts of their employees to organize andto join trade unions."" Hawaii had met thenecessary conditions for successful unionism which David E. Thompson describes:"The objective of trade union organization is to create a situation in whichthe organized workers can effectively deny laborto an employer who will not meet their terms for the sale of labor. Fundamentally,the power to bargain for improved wages and conditionsdepends upon the extent to which such a situation is created."15 By the end of 1946 Hawaiian industrywas almost wholly unionized: sugar and pineapple plantations,docks and utilitieswere organized. The sweeping unionmovement had wrought revolutionary change in the community's power structure. Out ofthe system which had concentrated economicpower in five companies had come countervailing powerthe unity of the workers.

32 The AFL,the CIO, and FarmWorkers After WorldWar II

As early as 1889 the American Federationof Labor discussed the organization of agricultural trade unions.Its initial successeswere in the field of livestock productionrather than crop production, and its first charter was issuednear the end of the 19th century tocow punchers on a huge ranchin west Texas. By 1902 it had placed organizers in the field. In 1910 the nationalconvention of the AFL instructed its executive councilto bring farm workers within the province of unionism. The first stable union of agriculturalworkers, still in existence today, was organizedamong sheep shearers in 1895 and brought within the American Federation ofLabor in 1912. Isolated from the major sources of labor, the sheep ranchersof the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain regionswere dependent upon the unique skills of a small group of itinerant shearers; since thesheep wool must be clipped at certain times of theyear, the bargainir g power of these workers was greatly enhanced. In 1938 theSheep Shearers Union of the AFL was absorbed into theAmalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, AFL. Organized labor's support of farm workerunionization did not result in major efforts until after WorldWar II. U.S. involvement in that wa had a profound effecton the agricultural sector of the economy. Thousands of farm workers migrated to thecities, where they found jobs in the expanding defenseindustries. The drainon the agricultural labor supplywas so extensive that in 1942 the U.S. government contracted with the Mexicangovernment for workers.

Importation of Mexican Workers

The story of the disastrous effectsof the massive importation of Mexican workers is a long and depressingone and can only be briefly outlined here.' At first, thegovernment itself was the prime contractor and sublet its contracts to farmemployers, but in 1948

33 I I

the system changed to that of individualcontracts between workers and employers negotiated by thetwo governments. In 1951, under the pressure of Kore:nwar labor shortages, Congress enacted Public Law 78, which governed theimportation of Mexican workers. P.L. 78 was a "temporary" measure, butgrower interests suc- ceeded in having Congress extend ittime after time, with only minor revisions, until finally furtherextension was defeated and the program had to terminateat the end of 1964. Before growers' requests for foreign workers couldbe approved, P.L. 78 had required the Secretary of Laborto certify that domestic workers were not available in sufficientnumbers at the time and place needed, and that the existingwages and working conditions of American workers wouldnot be adversely affected by permitting the use of the Mexican workersrequested. But during the fiftiesa pattern arose which evaded the original intent of thelaw. Growers would offer such lowwages that few domestics would apply for work. Having createdan artificial domestic labor shortage,growers were then able to request and receive Mexican braceros.In the absence of a free labor market,wage scales in some bracero- dominated crops remained frozen foryears, and in some cases even dropped, while wages in other industrieswere rising. One worker testified in 1962 about theCalifornia cherry harvest: "I remember in 1948, when they didn't haveany braceros, we got $1.10 a bucket. hen...after they ran the [Mexican] Nationalsin, the price went down to 85ta bucket and even lower. Just the last couple of seasons, it finallygot back up to where it was 14years ago: $1.10 a bucket. And the onlyreason it did was because the union put the heat on thegovernment and made them take out the Nationals."2 Many farm workers during this periodturned to other kinds of work, and some simply foundthemselves with no jobs at allas the only work they knewwas taken from them by the growing numbers of braceros. Therewas little attempt by the government to enforce the provision that domestic workersmust be given preference for jobs, and growers preferred the docilelabor force of braceros, whose abject poverty drove themto work long, hard hours for meagre wages that were nevertheless sizeablesums for their families back home in Mexico. The U.S. Department of Labor, whichadministered the importation program, came under mounting publicpressure to defend domestic workers against the evils of P.L.78. While opponents of the law failed to bring about itstermination until 1964, theywere partially successful in pressing for implementationof the law's "adverse effect" provision. III 1962 the LaborSecretary stipulated that growers who wished braceros hadto offer a certain wage (varying from state to state)as proof of a genuine attempt to at-

34 tract domestic workers before a labor shortage could be declared and braceros imported. But even these "adverse effect" wage rates were unjustly low, since they were based on "prevailing wages" which had been artificially depressed through the long years of the bracero program. Adverse effect extended into other areas in addition to wage rates. Since braceros left their familizs in Mexico, barrack housing for single male workers largely replaced the family housing needed by U.S. workers. Working conditions for the imported workersre- sembled those of slave labor. The Mexican government, negotiating in behalf of its workers, insisted on minimum standards covering wages, food, shelter, medical services, and the like. But once the workers were in the United States, isolated by language and culture, and unfamiliar with their surroundings, they were unable topre- sent grievances effectively; the Mexicans also knew that if they complained they would be deported. Thus the protections negotiated for themironically, the protections systematically denied American workerswere seldom enforced. With this cheap labor supply, the huge corporate farms not only depressed conditions for domestic workers, but also undercut small farmers in the marketplace by producing crops requiring intensive labor more cheaply than they could. California's share of agricultural production rose at the expense of everyone except thecor- porate farmers. The evils that result when the power is all on one side ina labor situation are nowhere more clearly demonstrated than here, where growers were able to secure large-scale governmental assistance in obtaining cheap foreign labor, while domestic farm workers hadno voice powerful enough to defend their right to their jobs and liveli- hood. One can readily imagine the public incredulity which would greet the managers of any other giant basic iriu.,try, say steel or coal, who after offering less thana Es-Lig wage, claimed that there was a shortage of labor, and demanded that the government ar- range to import thousands of low-wage foreign workers to meet their needs! Of course the existence of strong labor unions in other industries precludes such a possibility, but this is precisely what went on in agriculture for nearly twenty years following the genuine labor shortage during World War II. One of the major arguments advanced in favor of maintaining the Mexican labor importation program was that it was a valuable "foreign aid" program, in the form of millions of dollars inwages sent back to Mexico by the braceros. It should be pointed out that this foreign aid programand indeed it was thatwas paid for neither by the growers who prospered from it, nor by the general public which supports our other aid programs through taxation, but by the American farm workers who paid for it in artificially de-

35 pressed wages and in drastic loss of job opportunities. There is no comparable example of workers in any other industry being asked to bear the cost of foreign aid, and once again the results of the lack of union representation are all too apparent. It was impossible, in the early forties, to visualize the future con- sequences of the first Mexican bracero agreement. In fact, labor organizers had high hopes that changes in the economy and labor force resulting from the war years would lead to the permanent organization of farm workers. The Mexicans would return home and leave domestic workers to establish fair wage scales and union contracts. It was assumed too, that prewar farm workers who had had experience with factory wages and union contracts wouldre- turn to agriculture and make similar demands. The increasing transformation of family farms into agribusiness giants was making the "different" status of agriculture harder to maintain; there seemed no longer a logical basis for excluding farm workers from the social legislation which protected workers in other industries.3

National Farm Labor Union, AFL

But the sole farm labor development of any consequence during the late forties was the involvement for the first time of the Ameri- can Federation of Labor on a nationwide basis. In 1946 it granted a charter to the National Farm Labor Union, successor to the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, whose origins and prior history have been described in an earlier chapter. The AFL gave its new farm labor union, headed by H. L. Mitchell, the right to organize locals anywhere in the United States and adjacent islands. It sought to organize small farmers as well as wage hands. The union's monthly newspaper, the Farm Labor News, stated: "The National Farm Labor Union accepts as members all persons who earn their living by working on the nation's ranches and plantations. It accepts as members working farmers as well as agricul- taral workers. It bars from membership persons who are absentee owners of land or those whose prerogatives are farm management."4 The newspaper, in addition to providing valuable legislative and organizing information, also reflected themes of rural life and poverty in its dry humor. An example: "The worst crop failure I ever saw was back in '98," said the old-timer. "The corn crop was almost nothing. Ore day Mother cooked some for dinner and Father ate 14 acres at one sitting."5 Twenty-six union locals had been organized by November of 1950 and included sugar cane and mill workers in Puerto Rico,

36 cotton choppers in California, dairy farmers inLouisiana, fruit pickers in Florida, and sharecroppers inArkansas, among others. Strikes were called; the greatestwas in 1947 against the Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation in Kern County, California.over the issue of grower recognition of the Union.

Di Giorgio Strike of 1947 andCotton Strike of 1949

The strike, conducted by Farm LaborUnion Local 218, involved workers from Arvin, Lamont, and Weedpatch,small towns near the vast Di Giorgio land holdings. Di Giorgio recruitedstrikebreakers from the surplus labor supply ofMexican-Americans in Texas. Nine weeks after the onset of the strike200 out-of-state scabswere at work pruning grape vines; 1,000 morewere expected by the end of the season. Government officials openlyescorted braceros through the union's picket lines. Asone of them later said, "After all, it was our job to see that the [Mexican]nationals got work." According to Ernesto Galarza, NFLU's director ofresearch and education, "On the first day of the strike the bracerosstopped work. This show of solidarity with the domesticfarm hands was as unexpected as it was embarrassing The sheriff, Mr.Loustalot, and a representative of the U.S. Department of Agriculturewere called

George Meany and elsewhere. We recognize that the struggle to President, AFL-CIO organize farm workers is just beginning. We are determined not to permit these The AFL-CIO is convinced that workers to be starved into submission America's farm workerslong exploited by their powerful and giant employers. and long forgottenare now in the Even as the battle in the fieldscon- process of building an effective trade tinues, the AFL-CIO is pledged to union organization. The United Farm eliminate exploitation of the farm Workers Organizing Committee already workers at the legislative level. has awaken& the nation's conscience. Agricultural workers must have the Even more important, it has demon- right to organize and to bargain col- strated to farm workers across thecoun- lectively. There is no logical reason for try that they cln obtain first class citi- their continued exclusion from the zenship only through sef-organization. protection of the National Labor We in the AFL-CIO believe that Relations Act. the only effective farm worker union As the AFL-CIO Executive Council will be one built by the farm workers recently declared: "In flee most affluent themselves. For this reason, we have nation of the world, and supposedly worked with the UFWOC to train and the most humane, the substandard develop its own indigenous leadership. status suffered by the three million This training already is showing Americans who work for wages in agri- positive results in California, Texas culture car. no longer be tolerated."

37 in. What precisely they told the Mexicans isnot known. The braceros went back to work. They continued on the ranch as the main- stay of its labor force during the next six weeks, when the federal government yielded to the protests of the Union and themen were withdrawn....In the month and a half that the corporation had been able to maintain an aliencore of strike-breakers it was able to improvise a new work force, which gradually took over after the initial shock of the strike had been fended."' A documentary movie, produced by the Hollywood AFL Film Council, eloquently detailed the violence, poverty, and isolation suffered by the strikers. California unions raisedover $250,000 in money, food, and clothes. Lines from a popular DiGiorgio strike ballad ran thus: "God Almighty made the Valley For a land of milk and honey, But a Corporation's got it For to turn it into money."' During a union meeting the strike leader, JamesPrice, was seriously injured when shots were fired througha window. Picket lines were maintained for nine months aroundtwenty miles of DiGiorgio property. These lineswere prohibited after the courts ruled they were secondary boycotts and illegal underthe National Labor Relations Act. This injunctionwas continued for 17 months while the strikers argued that since theywere excluded from the ,,..

Strike leader James Price, shot during 'S.- strike -wga meeting

'wk ' protection of NLRA, they could not be subjectto its provisions. The National Labor Relations I 'yard finally reviewedtheir case and upheld their position, but by that time the strikehad been lost, and with it, the major effort to organize 200,000California workers. Two years later, cotton pickerswent on strike in California. Growers had cut wages back in 1949 until theywere less than the year before; the strikers asked for at least the 1948wage rates. "During the strike 14 leaders and unionorganizers were arrested for peacefully picketingon public highways. The strikers were jailed for leading caravans of automobileson the public roads and calling out to pickers who had not left thefields that a strike was on and the union was demandingan increase in wages."' The leader of one caravan was a young man by the name of Cesar Chavez. The State Conciliation and Mediation Service triedto settle the dispute, but the growers refused to accept itsterms. They finally raised wages up to the 1948 level, however, and themen went back to work. Members of the National Farm Labor Uniondrew clear distinctions between small growers in thearea who had met the workers' wage demands and supported them in theirstruggle, and the large growers who were members of the powerfulAssociated

Walter P. Reuther union struggles in the 1930's are going to continue to help them to organize Pres:dent, Industrial Union and, if necessary, to strike to secure Department, and their basic rights. United Automobile Workers, AFL-CIO The choice is whether they are going to have them the hard way, after a long We ought to be ashamed of the period of strife and chaos and suffering fact that this tion, for all its wealth because of employer resistance and and prosperity, is far behind most governmentalwhich is to say public other industrialized countries in giving callousness. That is the way it has farm workers the forms of protection been going; but there is an easier, more and security they need and other rational, more democratic and more American workers have long had. humane way. But shame, understanding, sympathy, The journey of farm workers and moral indignation, aie not enough. their families into the mainstream of What the farm workers need most American life has begun with a of all is actionin Washington, in struggle to brad their own community state capitals and in the fieldsto end unions and through them to reach out the hypocritical double standard by for the elementary rights so long which this whole nation has conspired, denied them. The challenge to the rest actively or through ignorance and in- of us is to insist that the Congress differeace, to keep farm workers and let this better future for farm workers their families from their full humanity. be born without long agony and travail, The choice before this country today, by giving their unions the protection atter Delano, is not whether American of NLRA and thereby a chance to farm workers are to have unions. bring order and justice into the nose of us who went through similar industry and into their lives.

39 Farmers and who used their influenceto gain the adoption of new county ordinances designed to halt the strike effort. In 1952 NFLU became the NationalAgricultural Workers Union. An NAWU organizing effort in 1953among Louisiana sugar cane workers culminated ina strike. The Louisiana courts issued anti- strike injunctions, which crippled Unionactivities. The Stipreme Court later declared the injunctions illegal, butthe damage had been done and the strike was dead. In 1960 the National Agricultural WorkersUnion joined the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmenof North America, AFL-CIO, which had worked withfarm laborers in the past. During the second World War and the farm laborshortage, the Meat Cutters had cooperated withNAWU's predecessor, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, in bringingover 10,000 Southern workers up the coast to workon farms in New Jersey. Other unions involved with organizing farm workersfaced similar difficulties. According to a California citizens'group, the Emer- gency Committee to Aid Farm Workers, between 1954 and 1959 "The United Packinghouse Workers of America, AFL-CIO,Local 78, has conducted perhaps ten or twelve strikes in California....Vir- tually every one of UPWA's strikes has been brokenby the un- restricted use of braceros behind the union's picket lines."9

Early Union Contracts with Growers

In 1941, the Amalgamated Food and Allied WorkersUnion, Local 56, an affiliate of the Amalgamated Meat Cuttersand Butcher Workmen, signed a contract with Seabrook Farms,one of the largest growers in New Jersey. Seabrook himselfcame to approve of the role of the union in his operation. He stated:"I don't think we have suffered any from it. We happen to be dealing...with quite respectable unions that have very reputable leadership,and we haven't been subjected to any wildcat strikes." 9 When his son, John M. Seabrook,was President of Seabrook Farms, he commented in 1959: "I think, actually, that theaverage farm laborer requires. . . amuch wider range of skill than the average industrial laborer does. Conditions on a farm are such that the job content changes constantly. You can't breaka farm job down into a series of repetitive, easily supervised operations like you can a factory job. I'm an engineer; I've run quite a few factories and I've run quite a few farms. I've neverseen an honest job evalu- ation yet that didn't come to the conclusion that the farm job ought to be paid more than the factory job." I1 The President's Commission on Migratory Labor found onlyone other instance of collective bargaining for farm workers (outside of

4° Hawaii) in its survey conducted in 1950.That contract, now de- funct, was signed between the UnitedPackinghouse Workers of America, Local 413, and the FellsmereSugar Producers Associa- tion, a cane sugar producing andprocessing concern in Florida. Results of the union involvementwere primarily securing the right of promotion from fieldto plant work, and seniority in hiring and firing. A Fellsmere representativecommented, "You have to admit that the union does performa job for you that [the company] would have to employ people to do foryou to maintain labor relations. It makes for more economical operations.There was a time when I didn't think it was so, but I have foundit is true."" It is significant that in both theSeabrook and Fellsmerecases, field workers were simply includedunder the contract for the processing workers, whowere covered under the National Labor Relations Act. The processing workers,with their rights to union representation secure under the law, couldfight for inclusion of the field workers in the collective bargainingprocess without endanger- ing their own position.

Agricultural Workers OrganizingCommittee, AFL-CIO

On February 5 and 6, 1959, thenewly established National Advisory Committeeon Farm Labor held public hearings in Wash-

William L. Kircher ing stability and high living standards for industrial workers without givingit Director of Organization, AFL-CIO a chance to perform similarly in solving the many problems of farm workers. For the first time leadership, right The tragedy in American agriculture out of the fields, is developing innum- is that in thirty years technology and ber and in talent. The trade union spirit ownership have changed so much while a' unity and solidarity is abroadamong working conditions and human poverty farm workers and their families. The have changed so little. barriers created by racial and nationality To continue to deny farm workersa differences are crumbling. level of citizenship comparable to other There can be no doubting it, this workers, on the pretext that they work time the farm worker is going to win. outside the framework of interstate He is going to build hisown union ... commerce in an industry that is "dif- a union made up of farm workers and ferent," is to ignore the massive growth led b;, farm workers. He will build of the corporate structure in agri- effectivt_ly and sucees:ully by the appli- business and the factory farm which cation of the wonderful and flexible dominates the industry today. machinery of collective bargaining to It is unintelligent to commend col- the unique problems of himself and his lective bargaining for its role in develop- fcllow workers.

4' ington, D. C., on the subject of farm labor conditions.Presenting testimony were representatives of labor, church, and civicorganiza- tions, as well as several Senators and Congressmen. Aneditorial in the February 23, 1959, New York Times commented:"The Na- tional Advisory Committeeon Farm Labor has done a signal service by calling public attention to the plight of farmemployes in the United States through its recent conference inWashington.... While the work of the Committee is research andpublic education, the Washington sessions have raised the publicpressure for badly needed action. . . . Promising, too, was AFL-CIO Secretary- Treasurer Schnitzler's report of a federation plan fora campaign to organize the employes of large corporation farms." The new campaigns was begun later in thatsame year when the AFL-CIO created the Agricultural Workers OrganizingCommittee, under the direction of Norman Smith. By June of1963 the labor federation had put over $500,000 into farm labororganizing, which centered in California and extendedup the Pacific Coast. AWOL, led two principal strikes,one during the January-March lettuce harvest of 1961 in Imperial Valley, theother against the California Packing Corporation in 1962. During the lettuce strike, "For nearlytwo months the Agricul- tural Workers Organizing Committee, the UnitedPackinghouse Workers of America, and the Government of Mexicoinsisted that the Department of Labor enforce the law, andremove braceros from the struck area. It did not doso. The lettuce harvest was completed by braceros and the strikewas broken."" In the beginning the organizing campaign ofthe Agricultural Workers Organizing Committeewas expected to be the strongest ever launched among farm workers. Although its financialsupport was cut back drastically in mid-1961, it nonetheless had already achieved an impressive record. Largely because ofAWOC's activities during 1960 and 1961, "farmwages in California rose about 25% from their mid-1958 levels. The number ofMexican Nationals employed in the state droppedas higher wages attracted more domestic workers. Publicpressure generated by the campaign

Hon. Edward M. Kennedy U.S. Senator (Massachusetts) For too many years those concerned basic protections of our labor laws to with the plight of the American farm those who provide our rnost basic need. laborer hare, tried in vain to move the We will succeed with the assistance conscience of a nation. The time for and support of all those who strive to exhortation has passed, and we in insure the presence of equity and Congress are duty-bound to bring the justice in our society.

42 helped to extend disabilityinsurance to agriculture [in Califor- nia]. ."14 At the end of 1961, delegatesto the Convention of the AFL-CIO voted to expand and intensify theorganizing drive in California. The 1961 resolution "callsupon the affiliated unions of the AFL- CIO to support the organizational undertakingfinancially, by publicity in theirnewspapers and magazines, by cooperation in the legislative effort on behalf of the hiredfarm workers, and by direct co- ordination with the actual organization effort...."15 Praising the decision editorially, the New YorkTimes stated on December 16, 1961: "Organized labor hasdemonstrated a sense of social responsibility with its promise of expandedhelp for the country's two million migratory and seasonalfarm workers, the most exploited members of the labor force." During the same year AWOC held whatwas reportedly the first organizing conference of farm workers since1936. Norman Thomas was an invited speaker, and he praisedthe delegates and pointed to the significance of their meeting:"You're fighting for yourselves and for your children and foryour rights...but I think that [as] you go on to builda union, it's not just yourselves you're servingyou're serving democracy, you're servingAmerica at its best.",6

The Ban on Braceros

All organizing efforts during the earlysixties dramatized the need to end the massive importation ofMexican workers. After countless strikes were lost through theuse of Mexicans, it became obvious that no enduring organizing could beconducted as long as braceros were constantly able to undercutunion wage demands. Time after time in government hearings,members of AWOC and other labor groups,as well as religious and civic organizations, called upon Congress to end the importationprogram. Congress finally voted to terminate the braceroprogram (Public Law 78) as of December 31, 1964. Nine months laterAWOC and a younger group called the National Farm Workers Association undertooka united strike effort, the results of whichare revitalizing the farm labor movement across the country.

43 The Sixties: Breakthrough

Mississippi

Of the whole currentwave of organization, strike, and demonstration activity by farm workers,the first ripple came from Mis- sissippi, as an offshoot of therapidly expanding civil rightsmove- ment The Mississippi Freedom LaborUnion was organized in the fall of 1964 with the helpof several groups including theDelta Ministry of the National Councilof Churches. In 1965 the MFLU had2,000 members, at least 300 of whom went out on t cotton strike in thespring of that year asking for $1.25 an hour and an end to jobdiscrimination. (Said onegrower who hired white strikebreakers,"I'm paying the white people the same as I paid the Negroes but I think Fmgonna give them a bonus."') Evictions followed, andmany workers lost even the miserable shacks thatwere their homes. Ninety per cent of the strikerswere "day haul" workers who averaged $3T a twelve-hour day; the strike effort collapsed when it prove.; impossibleto pull out the stable work force of tractor drivers and themen who trAniported the day laborers. In areas of such pervasivepoverty, strikers are unable to obtain the economic aid they sorelyneed; while they may have thesym- pathy of other ruralpoor, over the long haul these people simply cannot afford to contributeeven the minimum necessities. Ina situation in which mechanizatio4was making thousands jobless, and alternatie work opportunitikswere few, the union had no economic strength to back its demands. The achievement of MFLU layin bringing national attention to the miserable conditions andwages of the planta workers.

44 I

Louisiana

H. L. Mitchell, who willbe rememberedas one of the founders of the Southern TenantFarmers Union andas President of its suc- cessors, has continued organizingthrough the years. He heads Local 300 of theAmalgamated Meat Cutters andButcher Work- men, AFL-CIO, which has organizedGulf Coast dairy workers, rice mill workers, and pogy-boatfishermen, appropriately called"sharecroppers of the sea" because they workfor a share of the catch. He notes the changesin the attitude of the publictoward organizing efforts since the oldSTFU days: "Times havechanged in the past twenty-fiveyears. Last summer, another organizerand I were pickedup in Pascagoula after being caughtin the colored section of town after dark. Thesheriff releasedus with apologies after he found thatwe were just union organizers andnot the advance guard of the civilrights movement"! Another organizing driveis currently underway among sugar workers of Louisiana. Morethan 500 men andwomen have signed up with Local 300. Because theworkers earn $1an hour and less, the ten-dollar initiationfee is paid in ten weeklyinstallments, and half of the initiation feeis deposited ina credit union. The workers are using the credit union fundsto buy land and build self-help housing. Sugarcane workers risk eviction fromtheir homes, fur many still live in the plantation-ownedcabins inhabited by their ancestors in the days of slavery.Local 300 is tryingto sign up a majority of plantation workersso it can insist that the plantation owners bargain with them. The obstacleswere summarized by one worker: "If Itry to get a home of my own, the plantationowners won't like it. If I join the credit union, thestorekeeper won't like it. If Ijoin a union, I'm afraid I will lose my job."3 But the workers know that theonly answer to the economicpower wielded against them isto develop their own economic strength.

Hon, Robert F. KennedyU.S. Senator (New York) Lacking the protections of the support from a majority of the workers National Labor Relations Act,farm whom it seeks to represent. There workers' efforts to organize and has gain been no way to require thatan election bargaining recognition have beenun- be held among the workers. governed and unregulzted Most tests of eco- recognition strikes over theyears have nomic strength with employers far consequently failed, and employers wealthier and :nole powerful have than they. remained able to dictate theterms and No legal consequence hasattached to conditions of work. di!. fact that 2 union coulddemonstrate

45 California Union efforts continued to make small gains for California's farm workers, although strikes were unsuccessful and workers' attention turned increasingly toward voter registration to build a base of political power from which to challenge the domination of the growers. This became feasible as more and more migrants settled into permanent communities in several areas of the state. In1964and1965,the impact of a number of factors developing in the national picture began to converge in California, bringing a tremendous stimulus to the unions, which had been too weak to win but were too much needed to die. One was the growth of national awareness of poverty, which brought demands for new government programs to combat it and at the same time encouraged the aspirations of the poor. Another was the successful militancy of the civil rights movement, which stirred all minorities toward action and developed trained leadership for wider service. And the direct spark was probably the success or the long campaign to end the importation of Mexican contract workers under P.L. 78. Thus deprived of their usual cheap labor supply at the end of 1964,some growers turned to the Immigration and Nationality Act (P.L.414)to obtain the same workers through a different channel. But the U.S. Department of Labor had set criteria under which growers had to prove they had seriously attempted to recruit domestic farm workers, before the Labor Secretary could certify the existence of a labor shortage and permit importation of foreign workers. in California, these criteria included a basic "adverse effect" wage of $1.40 an hour. Many American workers naturally reasoned that they were entitled to at least this wage whether or not their employer was requesting foreign workers. The first major farm labor struggle after the end of the Mexican bracero program occurred in California's1965grape harvest. The largest grower was the Di Giorgio Corporation, which also grows other field crops, and against which the union struggle had gone on intermittently for nearly a generation. Second in size was Schen ley Industries, the nationally known liquor distributors.* The grape industry is not typical of California agriculture. It is a highly skilled, twelve-month-a-year operation. Cultivation tech- * For all practical purposes, the California grape industry owes its life to federally financed irrigation. It was a Di Giorgioa Sicilian immigrant with vineyard experience from the old countrywho first started vines in the sagebrush country of the San Joaquin Valley about 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The water table dropped steadily until the expense of drilling wells became prohibitive for all but the largest operators. The industry was rescued by the Friant-Kern Canal of the Central Valleys Project of the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, and the cost of supplying water is now estimated at $7oo an acre; growers pay only $123 and the rest is borne by the taxpayers and users of Project electric power. The 16o acres- per-owner limitation on land irrigated by federal water projects (which are sup-

46 1p .../1110. 1'

1 Striking 40 grape workers 1'

I. I j i

iv i ir George Bailie niques have been refined through years of experimentation, and the skill goes back generations to its European origin. Delicate hand operations of prt.ning and cultivating go on at regular inter- vals through the winter, so that 1J age resident labor force is needed, as well as additional thousands for the summer harvest. During May, 1965, members of the Agricultural Workers Orga- nizing Committee, AFL-CIO, struck successfully in the Coachella Valley to increase wages from $1.20 to the $1.40 "adverse effect" rate (and to raise the piece work incentive from 15 to 25 cents a box). When they moved into Delano for the second grape harvest, the wages offered were only $1.20 plus 10 cents a box, and they renewed the Coachella wage demands. Meanwhile, the National Farm Workers Association in Delano had been winning a different kind of struggleagainst a rent increase for the 20-year-old metal shacks, without windows or running water, which constituted public housing just outside the Delano grape area. The remarkable leader of this Association was the Cesar Chavez who had headed a caravan in the National Farm Labor Union cott ')n strike years before. Chavez, whose father had come from Mexico, was born in 1927 on his grandfather's farm in Yuma, Arizona. During the depression the farm was foreclosed. The family migrated to California and started moving with the crops. Chavez first worked in Delano in 1937, when he was ten. He returned from time to time, and eventually married a girl whose family were resident vineyard workers there. Like other Mexican-American farm workers, Chavez encountered both discrimination and abject poverty. Chavez was once arrested in Delano while sitting with his wife in a movie househe had refused to comply with the theatre's policy of seating Mexican- Americans on one side, Anglos on the other.

posed to benefit family fanners, not giant corporations) has been so loosely enforced that DiCiorgio's acreage is still 4,600 and Schenley's 3,500.

47 One fall the family pickedgrapes near Fresno. Each week the labor contractor said he couldnot pay them since he had not yet been paid himself. "At the end of theseventh week," Chavez recalls, "we went to the contractor's houseand it was emptyhe owedus for seven weeks'pay, and we haven't seen him to this day."' Over the years Chavez attendedmore than 30 schools. He had gotten as far as eighth grade when he droppedout completely to help support the family. But hewas an avid reader and his in- formal education continued.In 1952 he met Fred Ross,an organizer for Saul Alinsky's CommunityService Organization which was working among the Spanish-speaking inCalifornia. Chavez took a job as organizer for CSOand in 1959 became its director. In 1962 he quit CSO and moved withhis wife and children backto Delano, by then a community of13,500. "I had some ideason what should be done," he said of hisnew commitment. "No great plans; justthat it would take an awful lot of work to organize farm workers.It was a gamble. I went around for about 11 months and Iwent to about 87 communities and labor camps and in each place I'd finda few people who were committed to doing something; somethinghad happened in their live: and they were ready for it."5 The movement Chavezwas building owed much to hiscom- munity organization background. Wagesand working conditions were basic, of course, but the primary objectivewas to have the workers share in the decisions thataffected their lives. Through the National Farm Workers Associationthey began to develop services to meet their own needsacredit union, a cooperative store, a newspaper, and later, a health clinic. Thus when the AWOC workers,mostly Filipinos, returnedto Delano with their demand fora $1.40 minimum and a successful

Cesar Chavez ample, had participated inas many as Director, United Farm Workers three prior Di Giorgio strikes. Organizing Coririttee, AFL-CIO Second, it cannot be emphasized too often that there is a basic maxim which What elements went into making must apply wherever success is tooccur: the Delano strike as difficult, yet assue- You cannot organize and strike at the cessfu!, as it has been? same time. The powers are too great on First, the concept of a union for farm the side of the opposition; in California, workers is like an idea whose time for for example, we found that thegrower birth has come. The hour is here. We was but a small part of the opposition, can never be so bold to think that it for beside and behind him stood was MC:* "our" strategy that brought bankers, politicians, Birchers, andpro- the Schen lcv and Di Giorgio contracts grower unions. into being. It Ai P, -Ins the rears Third, due to t e fact 'hat the farm of suffering, pl :1: If .ng, strik- worker is excluded from the basicpro- ing. and !carp: g cu, ocforc. tective labor legislation, a strong, broad Some of the I) ."-:(,1-1:10 . ..rs, for ex- coalition of forces must be available

48 strike behind them, they found in the resident Mexican-American workers a community that was equally well organized, had tasted some victories, and shared both the dissatisfaction and the militancy of the AWOC members. The growers made no response to the demand fora wage increase and on September 8, about 600 to 800 AWOC workers under the leadership of Larry It liong struck 34 ranches. They demanded higher wages, improved working conditions, and, later,a union contract. (On one farm in the Delano area, 67 workers had to drink water from a single, empty beer can. Lacking state-required port- able toilets, the workers had to relieve themselves in the fields.) Eight days later 1,100 members of the National Farm WorkersAs- sociation joined the AWOC strikers. Chavez had hesitated because he thought NFWA was not yet ready forso crucial an undertaking, but within a few days he realized that this strike of fellow workers had to be supported. From then on until the two unions merged, a joint committee was in command. "Hue lga" (Strike) became the workers' rallying cry. Oniy the largest ranches were struck: Schenley, the Sierra Vista Ranch of DiGiorgio, and others that employed thousands. The growers responded in traditional fashion by returning registered union letters unopened, hiring strikebreakers, denying the existence of a strike, and harrassing pickets. Trucks and tractorswere driven near to choke the pickets with dust. Picket signswere riddled with bullets and the strikers sprayed with insecticide. In- junctions to limit picketing were secured andgroups were arrested for unlawful assembly. Workers who had lived foryears on grower property were evicted. The State Employment Service certified the existence ofa labor dispute at 23 ranches and so refused to supplyany more workers. willing to throw their full weight into union which is offered to the workers the battle. We have found that in lieu is simply that of a neat business opera- of elections and democratic procedures tion with no heart, the workers will for getting labor and management to- scoff; they will turn it down cold. The gether, sheer economic pressure must be union must hold out concrete programs employed. The tool of the strike is only which guarantee a new life. Coopera- a starting point. The best weapon yet tives, credit unions, educational pro- devised to complement the strike is the grams of a practical nature, money sav- boycott; and the boycott means coa- ing devices...these are necessary ele- lesced, public power. A simple rule for ments of any union planning on cap- us is: "Don't be too proud to ask for turing the imagination of the farm help." In Delano help came from all worker. It must be grass roots with a corners ...university campuses, vengeance. The most mundane office churches, organized labor, political or- work to the most sophisticated bargain- ganizations, and minority groups. ing must be broken into steps which Finally, the nature of the union being farm workers can learn, if it is to be built is of great importance. If the their union.

49 Although the growerswere able to obtain strikebreakers elsewhere, the unions were successful inkeeping many workers out of the fields. They traveledas far as Texas to persuade potential recruits not to break the strike. And oftena crew of strikebreakers would leave to join the strike. The total numberof strikers became greater than the number of workers regularlyemployed. It was said that tons of grapes were spoiled in packing byuntrained workers. The growers also suffered economically when members of theInterna- tional Longshoremen's and Warehousemen'sUnion refused to cross AWOC-NFWA picket lineson the San Francisco docks, and Delano grapes destined for export went back into storage. Crucial to the ability of the unionsto maintain the strike, as the months dragged on,was support from outside sympathizers. Though large donationswere occasionally made, the strike was sustained during the early months by smallindividual contributions averaging $5.56.6 The AFL-CIOwas, of course, financing AWOC. Its Industrial Union Department contributed$2,000 to the strike treasury, and in December the UnitedAuto Workers gave $5,000, pledging that amount monthly for the duration.The AFL-CIO Convention, meeting in San Francisco in December,1965, pledged its support to the strikers. Most notable right from the startwas the help of the Migrant Ministry of the California Council of Churches, whichlent staff

The Rev. Wayne C. Hartmire, Jr. leadership, it was relatively easy for concerned churchmen to lend support Director, California Migrant Ministry without dominating or distorting the movement. There is no doubt that Protestant From the beginning, the California churches have a traditional commitmentMigrant Ministry and its supporters and to social justice. But that tradition has sponsoring denominations were accused been betrayed time and again by silent of taking sides and fomenting conflict, acceptance of injustice and by elevating The churches of the agricultural valleys institutional self-preservation above the exploded with hostility and dissension needs of suffering men and women. In and that phase has not run its Delana,in 1965-67, local churchescon- course. Through it all, those church- tinued that betrayal, but other Chris- men who were closest to the strikers tians rallied to the cause of the striking insisted that elemental justice demands grape pickers. There are many reasons the organization of farm workers. If the why this support developed. Church is to give flesh to its faith, then Cesar Chavez and the early leaders Christians must put the institution of the NFWA represent the most im- and their own bodies on the line in portant reason. They built a grass roots support of the workers. It is everyman's labor organization that was run by farm right to expect that the Church in Cali- workers, paid for by farm workers and fornia and elsewhere will be willing to targeted on the needs that farm workers take risks for the sake of a servant min- feel most keenly. Givena farm workers' istry to men in needa ministry that union that is on the move with effective insists on social justice--even at cost.

50 4

Cesar Chavez speaks at State Capitol, Sacramento

8.I. oiNvalti _ Gcrhard Gschcidlc members and secured assistance from other church groups despite severe criticism from the Delano Ministerial Association. Catholic support came later, and also held firm under attack. Volunteer pickets joined in and freed some strikers to maintain themselves with temporary jobs elsewhere. CORE and SNCC helped not only in the strike but in organizing a nationwide consumer boycott effort, which was first aimed at Schenley products. National attention and support suddenly swelled, however, when in March of 1966, the unions decided on a march from Delano to Sacramento, the state capital 300 miles away. The march, half union demonstration and half religious pilgrimage, was exciting and colorful and in its 25 days engendered widespread publicity and sympathy. As the marchers passed through the small towns on the way to Sacramento, individuals and groups turned out to march with them for a time, and many offered food and beds to those going on to the capital. The marchers varied in number from forty to hundreds and, at the culmination in an Easter meeting on the Capitol building steps, they exceeded 8,000. Meanwhile, William Kircher, AFL-CIO Director of Organization, was able to establish communication between the strikers and Schenley. As the marchers neared Sacramento on April 6, Schenley signed an agreement recognizing NFWA as sole bargaining agent for its workers in Kern and Tulare counties, and stipulating contract negotiations within 30 days. Although the Governor did not appear at the Easter rally, and the State Legislature did not take up the question of collective bargaining, national pressure, intensi- fied by the march, was instrumental in bringing about Schenley's recognition of NFWA. Negotiations with Schenley resulted in a contract signed June 21, 1966, providing for a $1.75 an hour minimum, fringe benefits, and a union shop and hiring hall. Gaining recognition from DiGiorgio proved more difficult. After an election boycotted by the striking unions (and the majority of

51 the workers) and disallowed bya government-appointed referee, the consumer boycott, directedagainst Di Giorgio products after the Schen ley victory,was stepped up and began to makean impression. To counter attempts by the Teamstersto split their unity, NFWA and AWOC merged into the UnitedFarm Workers Organizing Committee and obtaineda charter from the AFL-CIO. In arepre- sentation election in the Di Giorgio fields latein August, the new United Farm Workers defeated theTeamsters and won the right to negotiate with Di Giorgio at its Sierra VistaRanch. UFWOC then pressed for recognitionat other Di Giorgio locations and again met both corporation andTeamster opposition; but they won at the largest, King Ranch in Arvin. In early fall,Christian Brothers and the Novitiate Wineryvoluntarily recognized the union. In November, 1966, UFWOCwon its most impressive representation election victory, 285to 38, at Mosesian-Hourigan- Goldberg, a small Delano firm. Thestrike continues againstsome 30 growers.* On April 1, 1967, the long-awaitedresults of arbitration between UFWOC and three of Di Giorgio's fourCalifornia ranches were made public. (The terms will also apply to Di Giorgio'sMarys- ville ranch if the representation electionthere on July 18, 1967,

* Events move swiftly in Delano. For current informationon boycotts, strikes and other develop cuts write UFWOC.

Thomas L. Pitts to achieve democracy at the job-site. This has helped to weld a coalition of Executive Secretary, California concerned urban residents, churchmen, Labor Federation, AFL-CIO civil rights groups, liberals, and trade unionists. Such a coalition is crucial Efforts to organize farm workers in to successful farm worker organization. the nat:on's largest agricultural state Without it, the unionization of farm gross farm income in California this workers would be extremely difficult, if year is expected to top S4billion not impossible. have been long and colorful.What has Farm workers Inve been denied their perhaps made the Delano effort unique -ightful place in the nation's economy is the high degree of indigenous farm or many s cars; they are now attempt- worker leadership in the UFWOC and mg to rectify this sorry situation.Thes the ability of the union to reflect the will succeed because history is on their desires, goals, frustrations and feelings .,ids but all groups in the economy of California fair workers will benefit if their success conies with- The Delano grape strike has involved al the framework of the National the entire community in the struggle Labor Relations Act.

52 results in a UFWOC victory.) According to J. Max O'Neill, Presi- dent of Di Giorgio, the contract "will, in all likelihood, establish precedents for collective bargaining agreements in California and other agricultural states. "7 In addition to fairly substantial wage hikes, a special fund was established which includes health and welfare, dental, pension, and insurance benefits. Di Giorgio will pay an initial $25,000 into the fund, and contribute 5 cents an hour per employee. Other aspects of the contract cover vacations, holidays, unemployment insurance, hiring, and leaves of absence. La Huelga and the march on Sacramento changed the farm labor situation in the whole country sharply and dramatically, but the California victories are only a beginning. Not even the grape industry is fully organized as yet, and the bulk of California agriculture remains intransigent. Efforts in other areas and crops will doubtless continue until all the state's farm workers are unionized and able to act effectively in the face of the growers' overwhelming economic power and political influence. But the financial cost of the Delano effort alone is staggering. The total bill is $40,000 a month, of which the AFL-CIO pays $10,000. UFWOC is still dependent upon food supplies pledged by supporters. "One union has pledged 100 dozen eggs a week (in all, the strikers use 200 dozen); another, 40 pounds of hamburger; and a bakery in Los Angeles sends up, daily, 100 loaves of day-old bread."' Even now, food sometimes runs out, and support of every kind is still vital. United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO Box 130 Delano, California 93215

Texas Texas sends out more migrants than any other state in the union, but it is also the year-round home for an estimated two million farm workers, mostly seasonal. It is their home poverty that leads so many of them to follow the crops elsewhere. The migrant stream they comprise fans out to the Rocky Mountain states, the Midwest, and the North Central States. The Texas workers are thus well situated to serve as a link to carry news of farm worker organizing, and it is not surprising that union activity developed next in Texas. A large percentage of the Texas workers are Mexi- can-Americans, too, so there was a common cultural as well as economic tie with the Hue lga movement in California. Starr County, in the lower Rio Grande Valley on the Mexican border, is the home base for thcusands of migrants and one of the poorest counties in the United States. Average per capita in-

53 ../1...1.1Tin

come is $1,568. Farm workers earn an estimated 50 to 85cents an hour, and about 75per cent of the county population search of work. Since migrates in 90 per cent of the peoplein the countyare Mexican-American,sl mpathy for the farm workers versal.' is almost uni- Starr County, then,appeared to be readyfor organizing. When Eugene Nelson, one of Chavcz's strike captains,came to Texas to organize the boycottagainst Schenley products to help the farm workers there, he was asked in the Rio GrandeValley organize. News of success in Californiaencouraged the workers. May, Nelson had By the end of signed up 700 andannounced the formationof the Independent Workers'Association. A strike was calledon June 1, 1966, and pickets three of the larger appeared at melon farms and fivepacking sheds. The workers asked for $1.25 an hourand a unioncontract. Within 24 hours the growers had obtained a temporary restraining orderprohibiting pickets at the farmsinitially struck. Picketingcontinued at other farms and the strikeidea was kept aliveby local marches and rallies. The growers sent trucks daily to theborder bridge to pickup the "green card"Mexican workers* used daily the pickets as strikebreakers, and were there to dissuade theMexicans. The strike impact was greatly lessened,however, when much ofthe crop was damaged by heavy rains. Help in the form offood and moneycame from unions, from local priests, and fromthe Bishops' Committeefor the Spanish Speaking. Toward the end of June,more than a thousandmem- bers of the independentunion voted to affiliatewith the National Farm Workers Association.But by this timemany of the workers had headed north forother seasonal farmjobs, and others would follow. The full-scaledrive for organizationhad to wait for fall, the return of the migrants, and thenew Texas harvestseason. It was decidedto adopt a Californiatactic and dramatize the plight of the workers by a march across the state to thecapital, nearly 400 milesaway. The original idea had been strike but it quickly turned to support the into a demand that theGovernor call a special session of the legislature to enact a $1.25 minimumwage law. A Catholic priest,Father Antonio Gonzales,and a Baptist Minister, the Rev. James L.Novarro, servedas coordinators. On July 4, 74 marchers started out, and about 25 made theentire trip. Support came from thestate AFL-CIO and frommany individual

"Green-carders" are so called fromtheir green visa for the U.S. undcr provisions of permanent entry into Public Law 414. Althoughpermitted to remain in the U.S., many "green-carders"recross the border each night, and since more cheaply on the Mexican side, they they can live are competing unfairly with theAmerican workers, who cannot liveon the same low wages.

54 unions. Churches provided meals and overnight accommodations along the way. Local groups (unions, students, civil rights workers) joined the march through their own areasso that it became a con- tinuing demonstration, much larger than its permanentcore. Sixty-two-year-old Reyes Alaniz marched all the way. "I atm doing it with my own heart," he said. "I have already wasted allmy life in the fields....I passed the hard way. I don't want the new generation to struggle like I did."" San Antonio's Archbishop, the Most Rev. Robert Emmet Lucey, endorsed the minimum wage demand in a Mass on August 27: "No sane man would conside that a fair wage in these days. ...We join you. ..only because you 'nave known the sorrow of cruel wages in the past and this objective isa step in the right direction....A wage of a dollar and a quarter an hour is ghastly recompense for exhausting labor under the burning sun of Texas."" Senator Ralph Yarborough joined the marchers on the final day and was the key speaker at the Labor Day rally attended bysome 10,000 people; he endorsed the $1.25 demand unequivocally. The Governor had met the marchers five days before, but avoided them when they reached the Capitol. He disapproved the march tactic, and did not call a special session. Signs carried at the rally said, "Remember, we can vote," and "Search your soul, Governor, this is the twentieth century."

H. S. Hank Brown Grande Valley of reactionary sheriffs, school boards, mayors and city council- President, Texas State AFL-CIO men. The labor movement and the church, The nature of the problems involved particularly the Catholic Chinch in in organizing farm workers differs in Texas, must help poor people to orga- some degree depending upon the area nize because they are the best equipped of the country we are taking about. We to do so. The strike of the farm in Texas must still, for now, depend workers in Rio Grande City took every on congressmen from other states for clic by surprise, but enlisted a coalition necessary federal legislation. We have which never existed before. Organized no more than five or six out of 23 labor and the chu:ch marched beside a congressmen who will vote for any pro rag-tag army of students, many or gressive social legislation whatsoever. were anti-clerics, most of Inclusion of farm laborers under the whom thought labor was ,,etting too NLRA coverage is an absolute necessity fat, and it has done all of us good. Most if there are to be any permanent orga- Mexican-American farm workers ale nizational successes. There must be Catholic, arthere can be no more large scale political education and regis- effective organizer than a priest who tration of Mexican-Americans to not remembers what the Vatican Council only elect responsible congressmen and was all about and gets out in the streets state legislators, but to rid the Rio and fields where his flock are.

55 Following the rally, two workerswere left to maintain a vigil on the Capitol steps, and the plan was to continue it until the legislature convened. (A minister anda labor organizer were later arrested on charges of "disturbing the janitorin the performance of his duties" as they took theirturn at this quiet appeal to conscience.) Meanwhile, strike action continued againsttwelve of the largest corporate farms. More workers struck as the fall lettuce harvest began. The drive to dissuade Mexican workersfrom strikebreaking continued with such successdespite the jailingof pickets at the Roma International Bridgethat it was expandedto include all bridges along the border from Matamores to Tijuana. Thearrest of the strikers was based on an old state law prohibitingsecondary picketing, a law which had been ruled unconstitutionalby the Texas Supreme Court back in 1949. On November 16, 1966, a report issued bya Starr County grand jury called the farm workers' str-! "unlawful and un-American," and "abus've of rights and freedoms granted themas citizens."

Eugene Nelson grate this spring as a result of more packing shed jobs being openedup by Texas Organizer, United Farm Workers changes in the wage and hour law. Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO Wages for those shed workers covered under Federal law were raised from I think the three greatest problems $3.25 an hour to $1..4o on Februaryi, inherent in the organizing of farm 3967; the law provides time-and-a-half workers are i) their exclusion from the for overtime for the first time to these National Labor Relations Act; 2) the workers. As a result, management is fact that many farm workers are mi- putting more people to work, at the grants, and their continued participa- higher wages, to avoid paying overtime. tion in union activities is difficult to The problem of education should be count on; 3) the comparative lack of attacked on two fronts. The more education of farm workers. unions are helped to organize and gain For large-scale unionization of farm contracts for the workers, the fewer workers to be possible in the reasonably will be forced to migrate, and more near future, coverage under the Na- children will remain in school. At the tional Labor Relations Act is absolutely same time, more schools for those chil- essential. If they are not soon covered, dren still migrating are needed to edu- farm worker unions will continue io cate them to better cope with their win contracts, as in Delano, but slowly, problems as a whole. at great expense and perhaps with the New changes are needed to eliminate accompaniment of considerable violations of the spirit and intent of violence. the immigration law. It is unthinkable The problem of the migration of that the United States Government workers will rend to be solved as other should allow Mexican citizens to cross problem: are solved and other benefits the border daily into Starr County to gained. For example, here in Starr break a strike of U.S. citizens living in County, Texas, fewer workers will mi- abject poverty.

56 The grand jury report continued, "Themeans as are practiced by the union group in Starr Coun.yare directly contrary to everything that we know in our American and lawfulway of life." The report called for the President to sendmen to the area "to assist in pre- serving the rights of all concerned," and forrepresentatives of the attorney geht van office and a Texas Rangerto remain in the county to assint local officers "during these extraordinarytimes."'' These shocking statements, made ina country where nearly all workers exercise the basic right to organize andbargain collectively, are incredible. The report complainedof violence and threats by farm workers. There have been absolutelyno worker-instigated acts of violence; even the rally of 10,000 farm laborsympathizers, which Governor Connally ref, sedto endorse for fear of rioting, was orderly and without incident. In January, 1967, Jesus Salas, head ofa Wisconsin farm labor union, spent two weeks in his hometown of Crystal City, Texas, where the population is 70 to 80per cent Mexican-American. He noted changes in the political situation since the abolitionof the poll tax. Now political organizationsare developing in the Mexican- American "barrios," or neighborhoods. Salas feels deeply thatpart of the solution to farm labor problemsmust be political. He describes an address he gave toa political rally in Crystal City: "I told them that the few Mexican-Americans froma 'barrio' who have had the opportunity to obtainan education must involve themselves politically." He put the grim Texas struggle into stark perspective: "The strike doesn't put economicpressure on the company because `greencal lers' are available....A law against mass pickets says that demonstrators must be separated by a distance of 50 feet. The farms are huge and a picket may not have mucheffect because it passes nearly unobserved....I never saw more Texas Rangers in one area in my life than there are in Roma."13

Hon. 'lenry B. GonzalezU.S. Representative (Texas) Farm workers have traditionally been workers in this country. Only through isolated from each other and from the organization is it possible for farm rest of society, and so have suffered workers to speak with one voice. With- from lower wages and poorer working out that one voice, little or nothing conditions than others who have en- can be heard of the plaints of farm joyed greater organization and contact workers. I hope that agricultural work- with the mainstream of American life. ers over the country will unite and It is clear that organization is the key work for recognition of their needs and to solving the dilemma of the farm solution of their problems.

57 Overwhelming supportwas given the strikers at Eastertime in 1967 when the Catholic Bishopsof Texas releasedan unequivocal statement calling on farm workersto organize:

We, the Catholic Bishops of Texas,would remind farm workers that among the basic rights ofa human person is the right of freely founding associationsor unions for working people. ...Included is the right of freely takingpart in the activities of these unions without risk ofreprisal. In view of thepresent depressed state of farm workers... we say that they have a duty to form and join unionsor associations....14 The statement also madea firm plea for the extension of the National Labor Relations Actto cover farm workers. That same Easter weekendsome 250 college students andsome of their teachers formeda "Caravan for Justice," and retraced the 400-mile path the marchers had takento the capital. Fifty-three cars were loaded with two tons of food and medicinefor the strikers, together with $2,300 raised for the strike effort. Those who had participated in themarch the previoussummer noted a slight change in theattitude town officials and citizens took toward the Caravan for Justice.In Rio Grande City, the strike center and scene of many arrests of strikersand their supporters,a rally on the courthousesteps proceeded undisturbed. Said Erasmo Andrade, chairman of the Valley FarmWorkers Assistance Com- mittee: "We were amazed. For thefirst time, the townspeople seemed friendly. Maybe thingsare changing...."I5 Unprecedented action by Mexico'spowerful labor union, the "Confederacion de Trabajadores"on May 11, 1967, gave new support to the Texas strikers. Starting beforedawn, seventeen Mexican members of a brick-makers unionpicketed their side of the Roma International Bridge ina successful move to stop the flow of strikebreakers into Texas. Waving the;:amiliar red and black strike banners and chanting "Viva laHuelga," the Mexican picketscon- fronted their own countrymenwith the strikemessage. Virtually all Mexican fieldhands stayedon their side of the Rio Grande that day. Said David Lopez of the AFL-CIO:"We understandwe stopped about 120 of the 200 whowere there yesterday."16 The farm workers' battle continueson a second front. They want a state minimum wage law. Overa thousand supporters turned out for a state senate hearingon a proposed bill, but the hearing was postponed at the last minute.The same thousand then congregated on the Capitol stepsto listen to Hank Brown, Presi- dent of the Texas AFL-CIO,say "Texas has more poverty stricken people than any state in the union. Aminimum wage law would

58 go a long way towards ending this deplorable condition. And we're going to march and demonstrate until Texas hasa wage law. ",7 Texas farm workers are digging in for the long haul. United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO P.O. Box 54 Rio Grande City, Texas 78582

Wisconsin The organizing struggles in Texas and Wisconsinare closely bound together, for many of the Texas workers migrate to Wis- consin for summer work. They go mainly to Waushara County where they harvest pickle cucumbers,sugar beets, potatoes, and cherries. In 1966, there were about 4,000 migrants in thearea, and as the news of organizing spread, the workers felta close bond with both the Texas and California strikers. A to on of predominantly Spanish-speaking workers, Obreros Unidos (United Workers), was formed under the leadership of Jesus Salas. It is, says Salas, "united in spirit" with the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee although not formally affiliated. Obreros Unidos, like the movements in Texas, Michigan, and Florida, uses the symbol of the black thunderbird which had been raised by the California strikers and became knownacross the country through the 1965 consumer boycotts. In August, 1966, members of the Obreros Unidos and theirsup- porters undertook a four-day, 90-mile "march for respectability" tc, the state Capitol in Madison and, as in other states, theywere joined en route by numbers of supporters. The Chairman of the State Industrial Commission promised hearings on the marchers' demand for a $1.25 minimum wage. When the workers askedfor representation on the Governor's Commission on Migratory Labor, they were invited to nominate representatives for appointment. Salas and a group of workers stayed in Wisconsinover the 1966- 67 winter to build support for the union and its demands throughout the state, and have kept in close touch with their members who work in Texas during the winter.

The Very Rey. Msgr. William J. Quinn Director, Bishops' Committee for the Spanish Speaking possibility. Those of us who believe in It is amazing that the "People of the dignity of all men and the concern God- woad remain over so many years of God for the poor must workun- oblivious to the plight of the poor stintingly until God mid his poor have agricultural u orkers. It is not t90 late. been rightly served by the improvement Federal and state legislation is still a of the lot of agricultural workers.

59 Salas has spoken of the need for collectivebargaining for farm workers, and, making a contrast with Texas,pointed to Wisconsin's recently passed minimumwage of $1.25: "I have always saidwe are achieving gains here due partially to Wisconsin'sprogressive legislation." The climate is different in Texas.There, according to Salas, "the press and television have been mockingthe strike. They completely ignore the attemptsor make fun of them."" The struggles in Wisconsin and Texasmean everything to the workers. Apart from the hope of immediateprogress, as an elderly Texas striker told Salas, "I have lived inpoverty and misery all my life and I live in poverty during the strike...but now I can walk with dignity."" Obreros Unidos (United Workers) 17 South Bassette Street Madison, Wisconsin 53703

Michigan

Organizing efforts were begun in Michiganin the 1966 summer season. By March, 1967, the workers felt ready fora march to the state capitalby now proven a successful tactic for dramatizing their needs. Michiganuses more migratory farm workers than any other northern state; they work mainly in the picklecucumber, cherry, and strawberry crops. The 70-mile "March for Migrants" fromSaginaw to Lansing was timed to reach the capital on Easter Sunday. Some 30state and local organizations endorsed the march, andhundreds turned out along the way. Rallies were held in churches in majorcenters as they passed, and it was pointed out that the march spokefor the thousands who would not arrive in Michiganuntil May. Sup- porting telegrams came from Chavez and the UnitedFarm Work- ."-- 41/4716kIlaii_ Ikk.10 1 II

Jesus Salas speaks at Michigan State Capitolr 4.... I I .',, 4 N t

% ..isok:77',.1',1' -4ft:It ers Organizing Committeeas well as from U.S. Senators Philip A. Hart of Michigan and RobertKennedy of New York. A Declaration of Grievancespresented to Lt. Gov. William G. Milliken called for betterwages, housing, and education, and for workmen's compensation. TheMarch was organized by the Con- cerned Citizens for MigrantWorkers, and speakers included the Bishop of Lansing andrepresentatives of the state AFL-CIO,the NAACP, and the NationalCampaign for AgriculturalDemocracy. Michigan has thus been madeaware of its farm workers and their demands, but thereal organizing is yetto come, as the thousands of migrantspour into the state for the 1967season. Concerned Citizens for MigrantWorkers Box 5271, 2516 Marfitt Street East Lansing, Michigan 48823

Florida

On the Atlantic Coast, Floridais a home base for workers inone of the country's threemajor migrant streams, and alsois a large employer of seasonal farm laborin its own right. Florida, like Cali- fornia, has long used great numbersof foreign workersmainly British West Indians who work inthe sugar harvest and also in fruits and vegetables. But whileCalifornia has made considerable progress in shifting to domestic workers, Floridais the only state that still depends heavilyon foreign workersalways an indication of poor wages and workingconditions for domestics. The Florida- based migrants work in citrus andvegetable crops during the winter and then move up the coast. Manystop in Virginia for the apple

Nicholas A. Zonarich this pattern of exploitation. And the way to do that is through organization. Organizational Director, In Florida, alone, more than20,000 Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO workers have signed cards expressing their willingnesstheir determination to join a union. Migratory workers have been called We of the IUD are assisting in the "rented slaves." Along the Eastern Sea- implementation of an organizingpro- board that term becomesmore bitter gram for farm workers on the East when it is realized thatmore than 95 Coast of Florida, in close cooperation per cent of the 3oo,000 farm workers with the United Packinghouse who follow the crops from Floridato Workers of America, AFL-CIO. New England are Negroes. Organizati ,n is the key to economic These workers are kept inan eco- progress for workers; and economic nomic bondage that condemns themto progress is the road to the basic social a level of bare existence. change needed to wipe out the shame The first job to be done is to shatter of "rented slavery" inour nation.

6i harvest and then go on to New Jersey or New York, but some tray as far north as the New England States. The Belle Glade area of Florida has perhaps the largest concentration of seasonal farm workers, about 22,000 at peak. As farm labor unrest appeared across the country, a few small and sporadic strikes over wage increases broke out spontaneously in the summer of 1965, but no serious organizing efforts were made until 1966. Then when workers appealed to the AFL-CIO for assistance, the Industrial Union Department sent its regional director in from North Carolina. Organizational problems immediately developed, one a which centered around whether the best way to reach workers would be to organize crew leaders first. (Although crew leaders are often primarily employers and thus part of the ex- ploiting system, in many cases they are simply group leaders and spokesmen for the workers, and as field workers themselves, they suffer the same conditions. of poverty.) The International Laborers Union first attempted the organizing drive during the winter of 1966-67, but their charter was turned in and reissued to the United Packinghouse Workers. On election night in November, 1966, some 400 representatives of Florida's farm workers met in Miami's Bayfront Park to sign a petition to Florida's Governor-elect asking to be treated like "human beings." The Miami News reported: "Florida, and Dade County, especially, have seen other movements in behalf of migrants come and go.... Never before, however, has the migrants' cause been espoused by a group as well-organized and muscular....''20 One of the reasons was the formation of the Coordinating Com- mittee for Farm Workers, a coalition of eight Florida groups including the Florida Citizens Committee on Farm Labor, the NAACP, the Migrant Ministry, the American Friends Service Com- mittee, the Florida Council on Human Relations, the Diocese of

Jack T. Conway problem of national proportions which directly or indirectly already involves Executive Director, Industrial all farm workers. Union Department, AFL-CIO Battling with great courage against formidable odds, the grape strikers have established a firm foundation for a suc- In the small, sun-dappled town of cessful farm workers' union. Out of Delano, California, determined grape this can growmust growone big u orkers walked out of the vines ards in national union for farm workers. September, 1965, and hoisted a banner Thc tfforts in California, in Texas, in with a single word emblazoned on it: Fio;:-!, Ncw jersey, New York, Wis- I Itielgar consin. and Michiganwherever farrr What was started bs these grape workers are foundmust be welded strikers in the San Joaquin Valley in into a national pattern of activity with California has become a widening one objective: one national farm struggle against a tremendous workers' union, 6: ti Miami, the Community Action Fund(an antipoverty group), and the Industrial Union Department ofthe AFL-CIO. This influential group is concerned with living and workingconditions of farm workers and with federalprograms to aid them. A spontaneous strike ofsome 2,000 celery workers broke out in January,1967,when 30 workers walked offtheir jobs because their employer refused 10 increasewages from $1.15 to $1.35 an hour. Irven Lee Dawkins, the workers'spokesman, said, "We want the farmers to sit down and talk withus." Another striker added, "We want the better things in life,just like the farmers. Wesee how people live on televisionandwe are people, too."" Three months later9,200corn and bean harvesters in Belle Glade and Pahokee struck under theleadership of Local1242of the United Packinghouse Wcrkers.After the workers' demandswere agreed upon at a rallyon April2,a delegation took their requests to a private meeting ofgrowers, only to be turned away. Union representative Michael D. Lozoff thencalled the strike. The independent militancy of theworkers lends urgency to the organizing campaign. With and without.outside help, Florida workers are declaring for unionization. Agricultural Workers Local1242 United Packinghouse, Food & AlliedWorkers, AFL-CIO P.O. Box 4274 Winter Haven, Florida 33880 New Jersey Although the largest agriculturalconcern in New Jersey, Sea- brook Farms, has been unionizedfor many years,many growers in that state are intolerant of change."No Trespassing" signs suddenly appeared all over CumberlandCounty during thesummer of 1966, directed not only at IndustrialUnion Department (AFL- CIO) organizers whowere signing up workers, but also at antipoverty workers developing childcare centers and other services for migrants. A majorgrower, Louis P'zzo, who was alsoa member of the Governor's Migrant LaborBoard, was quotedas saying, "...there's no place on this farm foranyone with a union card and I've told my peopleas much. . ..If I have to deal witha union, I'll shut the whole damn place down.You can't run a farm

Ken. Clifford P. Case U.S. Senator(New Jersey) I know of no reason why farm labor any other group, farm workers by the should be denied the protection circumstances surrounding theirem- afforded industrial and other workers by ployment need the protection of that the National Labor Relations Act. Act in their efforts to organize and Quite the contrary, perhapsmore than bargain collective's%

63 with unionization." Pizzo had earlier shoutedat VISTA volunteers, "See those people in the field, well, they're nothing, I tellyou, nothing. They never were nothing, theynever will be nothing, and you and me and God Almighty ain't going to change them."22 The 1966 organizing efforts demonstrated the needfor uncover- ing the natural leaders among the workers, and for trainingthem in union organizing. This requirement, for leadershipto emerge from the ranks of the workers themselves, is nowheremore necessary than in areas such as New Jersey, where labor is seasonal, and migrant patterns demand equally mobile worker-leaders.Plans are being made for the summer of 1967 to begin the painstaking task of laying the ground worknecessary for a full-scale successful organizing drive.

New York In New York, as in other states using farmlabor, basic economic issues are clouded by racial and ethnic prejudice.The thousands of Puerto Rican and Negro workers whopour in to harvest New York's crops face high rents, discrimination,and housing so poor that three farm workers have burnedto death in the state within a recent seven month period. In Brocton in western New York,a fire killed two Puerto Rican migrants in September, 1966. The fire spread from the old,pot- bellied, wood-burning stove in the tractor shed in whichthe workers lived. Worse housing conditions were discovered in migrant labor camps toured by a joint legislative committeea week after the fire. Don Hillegas, a student leader of the nearbyFredonia chapter of Campus Americans for Democratic Actionreported: "Many of the workers actually live in chickencoops and deserted garages. I have seen the housing inspectors tell the owners 'clean them up or get the people out' but thatsame inspector never pays a second visit and conditions remain the same.""

Truman MooreAuthor of The Slaves We Rent I don't know any way to overstate another gallant lost cause. the importance of a farm labor union. I think once the unions are estab- I can't remember being more saddened lished growers will prefer their reliable than when I saw the NFWA and and responsible handling of the essen- AWOC working separately in 1963. I tial labor needed at harvest. I think the think these two forces that are now consumer will be relieved of the sense working together will break the solid of guilt he must live with in knowing big grower front all the way across the that the food on his table was put there land. The building of viable farm labor by people living under ghetto unions need no longer be viewed conditions.

64 Another fire occurredon March 12, 1967, in Wayland, fifty miles from Rochester. Farm worker WillieOdom was burned to death in a migrant camp. Just three daysearlier AFL-CIO regional director Michael Mann had spokenat a meeting of the Rochester AFL-CIO Council, which will join in theprojected statewide campaign to organize farm workers. "Theyare the last remnants of slave labor in our own backyard," saidMann.21 The Labor News, a publication. of the RochesterAFL-CIO, wrote: "The late Willie Odomnever had a union. No one ever asked him to join a union. No one gave a damn about him andhe died a hopeless death just as he liveda hopeless life...." In a plea for unionizing farm workers, the article concluded, "Thejob must be doneWillie Odom's life and his death oughtto go for something."::5

In historic election, California farm worker votes on union representation.

UFWOC won.

Olk"11'".1ei, 651-%

/A \Z

65 HOW YOU CAN HELP WIN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING COVERAGE FOR FARM WORKERS A coalition group (of which the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor is a member) has established the National Campaign for Agricultural Democracy solely for the purpose of working for the Fissage of national collective bargaining legislation for farm workers. The National Campaign for Ap,L:ultural Democracy (headquarters: 110 Maryland Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002) has as Director the Rev. Gene Boutilier, wt.° was for nine months boycott chairman of the National Farm Workers Associa- tion in Delano; NCAD's field office (1800 Jackson Street, Golden, Colorado 80401) is headed by the Rev. Jack Alford. formerlyarea Director, Migrant Ministry of the National Council of Churches. For this campaign to be successful, support must come from private citizens. Here is how you can contribute to the overall effort: 1. Write now to your Congressman and Senators statingyour position on bills extending NLRA coverage to :Agriculturalem- ployees. 2. Write to NACFL (112 East 19th Street, New York, N. Y. 10003) if you wish to receive regular mailings regarding the progress of this legislation. Be sure to ask that your name be added to our "action" list as well, if you want to be notified at critical points when action is needed in support of the bills. 3.Place church, labor, civic or civil rights organizationson record by resolution or vote as advocatingpassage of this legislation. If your organization does not take positionson legislation, ask its mewbers to advocate the principle that all Americans, including farm workers, should have the equal protection of lawin deciding whether they wish to join an association for collective bargaining. Send a r"py of your action to the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor and the National Campaign for Agri- cultural Democracy.

4.Create state or regional coalitions of organizations andgroups to advocate NLRA extension. If a coalition concerned about farm labor issues exists in your area, strengthen it and place collective bargaining legislation as the highest priorityon its action agenda. 5. Support local organizing efforts; in additionto joining demon- strations and marches, contribute funds and basicnecessities to maintain workers where theyare on strike. (See addresses given at the end of preceding sections on current organizing efforts.) 66 Notes

Farm Workers and the National Labor RelationsAct 1.Congressional Record, March 2, 1967, S2973. 2.Congressional Record, February 28, 1967, S2732. 3.Federal Labor 1.01111 and Programs, U.S. Department of Labor,Bureau of Labor Standards, Bulletin 262 (Washington, D. C.: GovernmentPrinting Office, 1964), pp. 11-35. 4.Congressional Record, Febtuary 28, 1967, S732. 5. Quoted in Austin P. Morris, S.J., "Agricultural Labor and National Labor Legislation," California Law Review,54:5 (December, 1966), p. 1954 6. Quoted in Morris,p. 1954.

First Organizing Attempts in California 1.Quoted in Stuart Jamieson. Labor Unionism In AmericanAgriculture, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Staiiities, BulletinNo. 8 ;6 (Wash- ington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1945), p..t6. :.Jamieson, p. 60. 3.Caret- Mc'illiains. Factories in the Field (Boston: Little,Brown and Compcmv, 19;9), pp. 152-53. 4. McWilliams, p. 156. 5.Jamieson, pp. 61-6z; McWilliams,pp. 15S-62. 6.Jamieson, p. 400. Jamieson, p. 401. 8.Jamieson. pp. 401-405. 9.Jamieson, p. 81. 10.Jamieson, p. 16. ii. McWilliams, pp. 220-21. 12. Quoted in Alexander Morir. The Organizability of Farm i..2bor in the United States. Harvard Studies ii -Mar in Agriculture. N. 2 -I IL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1952 ),I.. 33. 13. Quoted in Jamieson. p. 103. 14.Jamieson, p. 87. 15. Ilam- Schwartz. "Recent Developments AmonFarm Labor Unions," Journal of Farm Economics, XXIII:4 (November, 1941 ), p. 838. 16. Schwartz. pp. 838-39.

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union 1.Donald 11. Grubbs. "The Southern Tenant Fanners Union and the New Deal" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Florida. 1963),p. 20. 2. Grubbs, p. 5. 3. Grubbs, p. 21. 67 4.Jamieson. p. 3-..-$3; Grubbs. p. 42. ;.Grubbs. p. 43. 6.Grubbs. pp. 46.45 i emphasis added . -.Workers in Our Fields. 25th MUM-Ma booklet of National Agricultural Workers Union [Washington. D. C.:J 959 j). 3- S.II. L. Mitchell, recorded interview for Columbia University Oral History Project. 1956.57 (mimeographed transcript. referred to hereafteras Oral I Iistory), P-23 9Grubbs, p. 96. io. Quoted in Grubbs. p. 104. ii. Grubbs. p. 114. 12. Quoted in Grubbs, p. 120. 13. Quoted in Grubbs. p. 105. 14. Quoted in Grubbs, p. 69. 15.Grubbs, pp. 192. 195, 198. 16. Workers in Our Fields. p. 6. 17. Grubbs, p. 341. 18. Jamieson p. ;Jo. 19.Mitchell. Oral History, p. 50. 20. Quoted in Grubbs, p. 344. 21.Mitchell, Oral Ilistory, p. 55 22. Grubbs, pp. 396-408. 23. Grubbs. p. 384. 24. Gardner Jackson, quoted in Grubbs. p. 382. ..,.Mitchell, Oral IIistory, pp. 63-69. 26. Quoted in Jamieson, p. 325. 27.Mitchell. Oral Ilistory, p. 64.

Hawaii and Its "Little NLRA" 1.Victor Weingarten, Raising Cane: A Brief History of Labor in Hawaii (I10110111111: International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, 1946), P- 34- 2.Weingarten, p. 9. 3.Weingarten. pp. 10.11: Curtis Aller, Laboi Relations in the Hawaiian Sugar Industly ( Berkeley: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of Califor- nia, 1957), p. 34. 4. Quoted in Ni-eingarten, p. 11. 5.David E. l'hompson, "The ILWU as a Force for Interracial Unity in IIawaii," Social Process in Hawaii, 15 ( 1951 )r p. 32. 6.:Alley, p. 35. . Aller, p. 38. 8.:Alley, p. 39. 9.Allcr, p. 45. 10..Alley, p. 51. 11. Aar, p. 43. 12.Alley, p. 9. 13.Allcr, p. 43. ii. Alla, pp. 56-57. 15. Thompson, p. 32.

The AFL, the CIO, and Farm Workers After World War II 1.For full discussins; see Ileum Anderson, Fields of Bondage: The Mexican Contract Labor System in.flusta;alized Agriculture ( Berkeley: privately mimeographed. 1163); and Ernes:o Galarza. Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Braccro Story (Sail Jose, Calif.: The Rr,sicrucian Press, 1964). 68 \ I t.:1 I ;11 I.1'. 1;2'-nI c

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The Sixties: Breakthrough 1. York Herald Tribune. September 12, 1965. LAM:. fonn II. L \litchell to Bennett. December. 1964. ;.1 he Lookout t Fish. Suifood. \grit-111111rd] and Allied Vorkcrs Union No. Nosclubcr. 1966. 4.A. V. kicbs. "Cesar Chace,:I bielgar- L'.S. Catholic. Scptembcr, 1966. p. ;1. Krch,. p. ;:. 6.John Crquiv Dunne. "Strike'..Natiirclas- Eicniug Post. Mac 6.967. P- 44 NCI:" York 1 ;Ines. .1.priI 4. ;96-. Dunne. p. 46_ O. 1 he -1 ex.'s Ob,co. cr. lime-Sept.1966: Texas .11-1-00 \Lit s. June 1-. 106. 1--. \ \CI 1.. Information Letter ;.1 :September. 1-

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I ).p.c i,.'; I N 1T1ONAL _XDVISORY COMMITTEE ON FARMLABOR

112 East 19th Street. New N ork. N. Y. 10003 GR: mercy 3-0284

Co-Citairmn. T:cccurer: As.s:stant Treasurzr: Frank P. Graham lohn A. Mackay Robert W. Hudgens A. Philip Randolph

Steve Allen Henry B. Herman Vvilbour E. Saunders A Mani L. Batt. Jr. Msgr. George G. Higgins Dore Schary Louis H. Bean Jacob M. Kaplan John M. Seabrook Robert Coles Rabbi Eugene J. Lipman Helen K. Shettle Helen Gahagan Douglas Isador Lubin Norman Thomas Rev. Waite! F. Fauntroy Archbishop Robert E. Lucey Frederick S. Van Dyke L. H. Foster Benjamin E. Mays George Wiley Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn Bishop Reuben H. Mueller Josephine Wilkins Daniel H. Pollitt

Founding Men:ben: Herbert H. Lehman Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Maurice T. Van Hecke Peter H. Odegard

Executive !;ecretary: Asst. Excel:the Secretary: Field Representative: Fay Bennett Linda Lewis Tooni Stanley Hamilton

Cognise!: Administrative Ascictant: Rowland Watts Gail Hershherger

The National Adisory Committee on Farm Labor isa voluntary, nonprofit organization whose purpose i', to gather and disseminate information aboutthe conditions and problems of farm workers. and about farm labor practices and policies. "Through public education on a nationwide scale the Committee seeksto mobilize public opinion and to spark effectie action by concernedgroups and individuals. Such action has been enhanced by a number of broadly representativestate citizens' committees on farm labor, organized with the help of NACFL.These committees have pla}ed an active role in proposing much-needed reformsin state and local farm labor conditions, and have introduced and developedsupport for both state and federal legislation. To extend these vital activities additionalstave committees will he formed_ You max write to the NACFL for more informationon this subject. for a list of other literature available. and for names and addresses of othergroups concerned with this issue.

N Nt- Fl does not want cost to deter widespi:....1d distributionof this report We a4 (fly We postage for a singe cop}: for tiaantit... orderswe must re- que\;;: Loffitthution Isuggested below Icoeiing pait of our rriming and ,ipprin,_: costs. up to 25 copies:50,.: each 26- 1 00 copies: 40c each over 100 copies:10e each